En Medias
by Fox in the Stars
Summary: My version of Alucard's life story, as he tells it. Alternate universe, does not fit with CV canon. Contains graphic violence, some sexual content, and loads of angst. Please rr. Formatting fixed.
1. Part the First

En Medias*

by Half-Esper Laura  
Based on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (and a little bit on Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse) by Konami

Part 1 of 6

Author's Notes: The story switches back and forth between Alucard's narration and scenes from his life as I've invented it (I have no illusions that my Castlevania/Alucard timeline reflects the official one). The narration sequences are in italics to set them off; in other file formats I did that with font or color, but I don't think those devices are available here, and I want to avoid confusion. This story was originally written all in one piece, and I am posting it in parts for ease-of-reading, rather than having the breaks for aesthetic reasons or anything. 

***

_If you really want to know, I'll tell you. Maybe then you'll understand what I'm trying to say a bit better. That there really is no other way. That it has to be like this for me._

_So what do you want to hear? The good times that were nothing but deciet? The bad times when I barely held on to my mind?_

_Ah, yes, always the best place to start. But the very beginning is something that I really don't know._

***

Lisa began to wake, but in the night darkness it took her a moment to realize there was someone else there. He loomed over her bed as a large, ominous black shape, surmounted by a strong and attentive white-haired head. 

She sat up modestly in bed, pulling her feet under her. "What do you want?" 

"You." 

A moment passed in silence, then she looked up and met his eyes. They seemed to glow like hot coals in the darkness. 

"Then I am yours, but you must marry me," she said. 

The night-visitor lowerered menacingly over her, so close she could feel the cold of his voice on her face. "Do you think you can keep me from taking what I want...?" 

"No," she said, very calmly. 

"Why should I do what you say?" 

"Because you want to." 

He regarded her with that piercing, unnatural stare for a long moment. Finally he rose, with a surprisingly human sigh. "Yes, I do." 

***

_I was born the day before All Hallows' Eve, late in the evening, or so I'm told. It would have been a good thing if I could've waited through the next day and been born on All Saints' Day, but I suppose that was not to be._

_I seem to recall being told also that I was a quiet and good-natured baby, but that was all very long ago. I might be flattering myself._

_The first things that I do certainly remember seem strange and dreamlike now. I've had so many dreams that sometimes the line between them and my waking memories seems indistinct. But I know which is which, and I remember my mother's house in the village._

_I spent most of the day inside, because I burned easily in the sun. My mother was a healer. She was quite good at it, but it was only the desperate people who came to us, the ones who were willing to try anything, because my mother was ready to try anything. If she could save a person's life with gypsy herbal concoctions or ancient chants, she would do it._

_Of course there was a "respectable" doctor in the village, too. It seems very ironic to me, the way people are terrified of vampires---and rightly so---and then go to someone who bleeds them or uses leeches to cure them of diseases._

_Ever since I remember, people avoided us, unless they were desperate. I grew up around whispers that my mother was a witch, that there was something evil in her devotion to helping the sick and injured. It sounds even more foolish to me now than it did then. And I think they must have sensed that there was something different about me, that I was something other than human._

***

"Don't you climb trees, either?" the boy asked. 

Adrian shook his head silently. 

"My dad taught me how." 

"My dad doesn't do things like that," Adrian said softly. 

"Wow! You talked! I never met anybody as quiet as you." 

A silent shrug. 

The other boy considered. "So, what could we do...? Oh, I know! I can be your dog!" Immediately he dropped to all fours and started panting like a dog. 

Adrian just stared at him for a moment. 

The other boy made a couple of barking sounds and rubbed his head up against Adrian's chest, to give him the idea. Apparently it worked, and he started laughing and petting the "dog's" head of coarse brown hair. 

Suddenly, the boy jumped up and ran off, getting back to two feet in his haste. Adrian barely had time to wonder if he'd done something wrong before his playmate returned, carrying a short stick which he dropped in Adrian's lap before returning to all fours and panting. 

"Oh, is this for me?" Adrian said, picking up the stick and petting his head again. "Thank you. You're a nice doggie." 

"You're supposed to throw it," the boy said aside to him, although there was no one to listen in. 

"Hm?" 

"You're supposed to throw the stick." 

"Um, okay." Adrian tossed the stick a short distance, and the boy went romping after it on all fours. He picked it up and returned with it, pouncing on Adrian with such energetic canine affection that he knocked him over, and the two of them fell over laughing in a heap. 

Adrian had just picked himself up and started rubbing his dog's belly when a shout from nearby interrupted them. "Trevor!" a man's voice called. 

"Coming, Dad!" the "dog" called, getting to his feet. 

Adrian turned to see the man, who was coming closer but stopped about ten feet from the tree. "Trevor, come here!" 

The boy ran over to his father, who grasped him firmly by the arm and began leading him away. "I don't want you anywhere around that boy, do you understand me?" If he had intended to hide what he was saying from Adrian, he wasn't trying very hard. 

"Dad...!" 

"Don't argue with me. Never go near him again." 

Their voices faded away as Adrian watched them go. He stared after them until they were out of sight. 

***

_Sometimes I wonder if my mother would have had such troubles if I hadn't been there. The only devil they ever saw her consort with was me._

_Yes, it is. Be patient and I'll tell you about it._

_And yes, my father was there, but it was a secret thing. He came only at night, and I think only Mother and I ever saw him. It shames me to think of it now, but I did love him then. I fell asleep sitting in his lap many times, although in the winter I had to be wrapped in blankets because he was so cold. I don't think any of us said anything about what he was. Or if we did I'd forgotten about it by the time I grew up._

_It was already in me then, however. I remember that once in a while Mother would cut her thumb and let me suck the blood from it to calm me. Even then I had the hunger for it, every so often._

_But it was a very good life. I was happy then. There were signs; I should have known that trouble would come, but I had no idea. I couldn't imagine anything horrible happening. My mother, she was... She was the most wonderful woman I could ever imagine. She never struck me when I was a child. When I misbehaved she talked it over with me calmly, made me understand why I should act differently. She was very kind, harmless you could almost say, and yet so strong. I think the violence of an army would be less good for stopping wars than my mother's smile of compassion or that ever-so-slight frown of reproach._

_I suppose it did stop a war, at that. Of course my father was awake when the Belmonts still lived in Romania. Otherwise I wouldn't have been. But he made no violence or trouble during my mother's life. I suppose he must have found sustenance somewhere, but he must have been discreet about it. No one ever heard anything of him._

_Well, yes. Yes, he did, but that was after... You'll forgive me, I've been... I've been reluctant to speak of this part._

***

"MOTHER!!!" 

Adrian's scream pierced through the rumbling voices of the crowd as he sprinted through them, shoving desperately through to the center of the village square. He was still running when a powerful grip caught his arm, and his forward momentum sent him crashing to the ground. Even has he fought to free himself, another pair of hands took his other arm. 

"LET ME GO!" he screamed, as viciously as a child's voice could. "MOTHER, I'LL SAVE YOU!" Something was surging through him, something even more than the fear and the anger. With every beat of his heart, the grip on his arms seemed less inescapable. Every pull against his captors came closer and closer to overpowering them, he could feel it. The strength had to be there. He wouldn't let anyone stop him. 

"Adrian, no!" Lisa called from above him. 

He stopped fighting and looked up at her. She was bound to a great wooden pole, with a horizontal beam at the top to which her wrists were tied. It looked as though she were hung on a cross. 

"Mother!" he cried, but this time more sedate, more pleading. 

"Adrian, it's all right," she said, her voice as soft and comforting as it had been in a thousand evenings at home. "I'm so glad I can see you again before I die." 

"You're not going to die!" 

"If this is the price I have to pay to save other people's lives, I will give it gladly. I'm only so sorry that I can't be with you and see you grow up." 

His legs gave out underneath him, and the men let him fall to his knees, sobbing. 

"Please, don't cry just yet. I don't want you to cry the last time you look at me," Lisa said. 

He wiped his face and looked up at her. His eyes were sparkling, but he met her gaze steadily, even as he heard the crackle of flames from somewhere nearby. 

"Adrian, my dear, beautiful son, these will be my last words to you, so always remember them. Will you do that for me?" 

He nodded, unable to speak. 

"Do not hate these people, Adrian. Do not hate mankind. If you cannot live with them, then at least do them no harm, for they have enough troubles just in themselves. 

"And you must give my message to your father. Please, Adrian." 

He had to squeeze his eyes shut against the tears, but he nodded. 

"You must tell him that I will always love him, for all of eternity. 

"And I will always love you." 

Those words were the last sound Lisa made. 

Adrian sat there on the cobblestones on his knees and did not open his eyes as he heard the roar of the fire, the crackling of the burning wood. He could feel the heat and smell the smoke from the burning cross, and all too soon, a smell that was new to him, but he somehow knew inside that it was the scent of burning flesh. He tensed with the dread of hearing his mother scream in pain, certain that if he heard such a horrible sound it would strike him dead. 

But there was no scream. He waited forever and forever, until finally the roar of the fire died down. Only then did he dare to open his eyes, and the image before him tore through his mind like a jagged blade. There was only black ash left where the cross had been, and his mother with it. A skeletal base of the pole remained, with charred shapes scattered around it. He only opened his eyes for a moment, but even in that flash there was the ghastly recognition. Some of those black shapes were the shapes of human bones... 

After that, there was nothing. All the world seemed obliterated in his scream of grief, and there was nothing left at all except his own body, tiny and helpless, wracked with sobbing, tears pouring down his face. He didn't even notice as one of the men picked him up and carried him away. 

***

_Yes. I was eight years old then. After she died I didn't care what happened to me. I thought my life was over. I've never understood why they didn't kill me, too._

_They took me out and left me in the forest surrounding the village. Whether I was supposed to find somewhere else to live or to be killed by wild animals, I'm not certain. But when I finally came to my senses, it was late that night, and what brought me around was the sounds of wolf-howls. It sounded like there were hundreds of them, running through the forest. I wasn't especially frightened. I was too grief-stricken to be concerned about losing my life. But late in the night I thought I heard some commotion, perhaps screaming, very distantly. And then the wolves came back through the forest. I knew then because a huge black one walked right up to me and smelled me, then walked away._

_A few moments later my father appeared. It was much later that I realized that he was the black wolf. Probably all the wolves in the country were under his leadership that night, making that village pay for its mistake._

_But when it was over my father took me home._

_Yes, to Castlevania. I don't think I saw much of it then, however. Or else I didn't understand what I was seeing. It was... well-appointed. I was used to a small village house, and now I had a castle-room with a canopied bed. It didn't matter at the time, though. I was inconsolable. My father tried what he could to comfort me, but I'm sure you can imagine how that was. I was so distraught that I never even thought to tell my father my mother's dying words. It saddened me for years that I broke my word to her._

_I've told him by now._

_In any case, I didn't stay long in Castlevania at that time. It was apparently decided that I should be educated, and as well as possible, so I was sent to England to study. It was the first time I had been more than a few miles from the place I was born, so it was really quite impressive, seeing the Swiss Alps and France, and then across to England. The change of scenery began to take my mind off things._

_At first I studied at a monastery school. Yes, I wonder what he was thinking of, but there weren't very many other schools at the time. This was only the start of the fifteenth century, you know._

_Oh, I hadn't? I'm sorry. I suppose you know now._

_But I did study at a monastery school. The constant exposure to crosses and other symbols of holiness wore on me greatly, and at times I was overcome and fell down in fits. Thankfully, the monks didn't interpret this as evidence of an unholy nature. Some thought I had the falling sickness or a similar malady, others thought I was weak-willed and easily posessed by spirits good or evil. Some of my more affectionate teachers believed me prone to violent religious ecstasies._

_Once I got the basics down I went to Oxford to study. I learned Latin and English, and such literature and science as there was at the time. Of course it all seems very outdated now. At that time we thought barnacle geese came from barnacles. Human physiology was known only in the most nebulous fashion, and there was no New World at that time. But you can only imagine how wondrous it all seemed to me then. Where before there had been only my village, my world grew larger and larger every day. Language and literature, science and history, I pursued it all with wonderment and joy. Once I was even able to take a trip to see the "classical world." Rome, Athens. Italy was the most instructive thing of all at the time, in hindsight. The Rennaissance had begun there, and we found all sorts of interesting ideas that we wanted to try when we got back to England._

_Yes, we. At Oxford I was finally able to find a circle of friends; they were perfectly wonderful to me. Loyal even to the end. Of course they all thought I was a bit odd. Because of my sensitivity to sunlight, it became my habit to wake around noon, make the mid-day meal my first of the day, and then stay awake to all hours of the night. Once one of my fellows, William, I believe it was, stayed awake with me on a bet, because none of them had ever seen me go to sleep at night. He barely made it, and he couldn't believe that I was awake until about four in the morning._

_But I loved the night. I still do. They say that evil things are afoot at night, but the feel of night air is so wonderful. Back then I did my best work quietly, at night, and the evening walks with Joan were truly a blessing._

_Ah, yes, Joan. Then in my youth was the only time that I have ever been "in love." She was a native of the area, named Joan Carter. She and I agreed to be married, but of course it never happened. Looking back on it, I suppose that is for the best. Heaven forbid that Count Dracula should ever have grandchildren._

_But we were waiting for my father's blessing to proceed with the marriage, you see._

_I never really finished my schooling there. It ended on... very bad terms. That was really when my troubles began in earnest._

_Well, to tell you of that, you must know of another thing that was happening during my years at Oxford, the dark and disturbing thing. I mentioned things of the Rennaissance, ideas that my friends and I caught on to? Among them was the dissection of animals._

***

The four young men huddled around the kitchen table, staring intently at the contents of a metal pan set in the middle of it, with candles right beside it for as much light as possible. 

"It's a shame you can't do this while it's alive." 

"Oh, God, that's disgusting!" 

"Well, think of it," Richard said, pointing to the innards of the skinned rabbit laid open in the tray. "Here's all this stuff, and you never get to see it work. It'd be fascinating, just once so you could see it all in action. I don't know, maybe we could knock one out and-" 

"Oh, shut up, Rich, you're making me sick," Robert cut in. "This _is_ going to be dinner, you know." 

"May as well see what we can see, though." William wrapped his fist around the rabbit's snout, then lowered his lips to his fist and blew into it. "See, there's the lungs," he said as the whitish tissues expanded. 

Richard was making exploratory cuts into some of the obvious organs. "Oh, here's the stomach. Looks like greens anyway. And here it goes into the guts..." 

"You've been just watching intently up until now," William said, turning to the fourth member of the group. "What do you make of it, Adrian?" 

"Hm?" Adrian came around to realize that he had a corner of his fingertip in his mouth. "Oh, nothing really. I've been kind of distracted..." He spoke perfect English, but with a distinct East-European accent. He'd been told this made it harder for native speakers to detect subtle emotion in his voice, and at the moment, he hoped it was true. 

"Huh. The way you were staring, I thought this rabbit had become your whole world," Robert said. 

"If you're just going to sit like that, I'll tell Joan you were thinking intensely about her while staring at a dead animal," Richard added. 

"I'm not!" 

"I had to take a shot guessing something you were thinking about to the point of total distraction." 

"No, she was far from my mind at the time." Thankfully. 

William took the knife and touched another conspicuous organ. 

"I think that's the heart," Adrian offered. 

"Wow, he talked!" Richard said. 

"Well, when you want to aim an arrow at the heart, it's around that area, and see these vessels going out and branching off... When the heart beats, it forces the blood out into all of those, and then when it rests it all draws back in again." 

"I wonder if it's empty or full," William mused. 

"Well enough blood drained out it ought to be empty," Robert noted, pointing to the blood collected in the tray." 

"One way to know, though," Richard said, picking up the knife again. 

Adrian spoke up despite himself. "Please don't." 

"What's the matter?" William put a hand on his shoulder. 

"Just... don't. It seems... It seems wrong somehow..." 

The door to the kitchen opened, and the middle-aged house mother leaned in. "Are you boys done playing with that poor rabbit yet? I'll have to get it in the oven pretty soon." 

"Yes, Miss Bartlett, we're done," William said. 

The four of them began to scatter away from the table as she walked over and picked up the tray. "Oh, goodness, what a mess!" She took it outside, and Adrian followed her as far as the doorway, while his three friends started back toward their rooms. Miss Bartlett hefted the rabbit by all four legs, then turned back to the door. She opened her mouth to shout, but stopped without making a sound. Seeing Adrian watching her from the doorway, she had the off-balance look of someone who had set about to force a door open and found it unlatched. "Go throw this out for me, will you, dearie?" she said, with a tired voice and a nod toward the pan of blood. 

"Yes ma'am." He picked it up and carried it off into the surrounding trees, trying his best not to look at it. But he couldn't help but notice the way it sloshed around, no matter how steadily he tried to walk, pooling into deeper areas that were crimson, almost black, and leaving a thin layer of vivid red behind it, the way it glistened in the light... 

He walked far enough into the trees that he was sure no one would see him, although he wasn't really sure why he did so. And he stood there dumbly with the tray in his hands for far too long. Something inside him didn't want to throw the blood out, didn't want to get rid of it. The compulsion was a total mystery to him, but was insistent, almost overpowering. At last he squeezed his eyes shut so that he wouldn't have to see it go as he started to tip it out. 

Without any conscious intention to do so, Adrian brought the edge of the pan to his mouth and drank from it, down to the last drop. Immediately, he realized what he'd done, and threw the pan on the ground in horror. He stumbled back against a tree, and his hand darted to his mouth as he felt his stomach knot up. Struck with a sudden fear, he felt around his face, but it was dry. Apparently he had managed to commit the crime without getting blood on his face. If he had, and Miss Bartlett---or anyone else---were to see it... 

But even as he felt that he was about to be sick with disgust, even as he indeed wanted to be sick, to vomit up the blood rather than keep it inside him, there was something wonderful about it, something warm and satisfying. Exhilirating, in fact. He'd heard things about the taste of blood, that it was supposed to taste like salt, or like copper, but it didn't. It tasted sweeter than the finest wine he had ever tasted. Somehow he had known that all along. 

But it didn't taste the way he expected. It tasted familiar, but fell short of whatever it was being compared to. This was only a shadow of the flavor that he remembered, but didn't quite remember fully... 

He wanted to remember fully. And that was what made him tremble inside more than anything else. 

***

_You see, I didn't know anything about my... peculiar ancestry at the time._

_Of course I kept it to myself. People were burned or hanged for less in those days. Mother, for example._

_I exchanged letters with my father the whole time I was at Oxford. I was young and naive and thought that he was a usual sort of nobleman. These letters were the only place that I dared to confide my secret to anyone. I thought perhaps it was some inherited defect that he could counsel me about. He wrote back to me and said not to worry myself over it, beyond keeping it a secret. Of course now I can imagine how he must have laughed at me when he read those letters._

_And I did worry about it, despite what he said. When it came upon me, I would fight it day and night, but I was never able... never strong enough to fight it _off_. In the end it always got the best of me. If I was lucky, I could drink the blood of some slaughtered animal, but I wasn't always so lucky. There were times when I was forced to bite a live animal and suck its blood, like a vampire. I never looked at myself in the mirror when I did this---I doubt I could have faced myself. But the point is that I never saw the fangs. I didn't know the mechanism of the bite at the time._

_I do have a reflection. Not like normal people; if you saw me in the mirror you could see anything behind me also, but I do show up._

_But that's beside the point. Back then, I never bit another person. Although now and then, the worst happened, and it came over me in company, when I was at a lecture, or with William and the others. Necessity is the mother of invention, so I did devise a way to avoid attacking other human beings-my own blood. I excused myself and bit down on my own hand or wrist, and sucked the blood from it. Of course it made me lightheaded and weak, but it satisfied that horrible hunger. In fact it was... It was better than the blood of animals. Richer. This all must be disgusting to you, this talk of drinking blood, but my own instead of a rabbit's was like drinking wine instead of water. In time that came to be my preferred way of handling it._

_I've worn gloves like these ever since then, by the way, to hide the scars from those bites. I don't know why they haven't healed in so much time, but I can show them to you. Here. Yes, it's very odd. I have had scars almost as old, and larger and worse, and one can't see them anymore, but I still have these._

_But as I was saying, this secret. It only grew larger and larger, until I was utterly consumed with it. The fear that this hunger would come, thinking what to do if it did... As I was nearing the age of twenty, it reached the point at which these thoughts were near me every waking moment. I think that those close to me noticed that something was amiss, but they didn't know until..._

_This habit of biting myself, it was my undoing. Although God forbid I had done another thing that night instead..._

***

"'If only you would forgive their sin!'" Adrian read. "'If you will not, then strike me out of the book that you have written.' The Lord answered, 'Him only who has sinned against me will I strike out of my book. Now, go and lead the people whither I have told you. My angel will go before you. When it is time for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin. 

"'Thus the Lord smote the people for having had Aaron make the calf for them.'" 

"It's nice that you have all of these stories written out," Joan said, tugging at a thread in her sewing. 

"When I was learning to write, the teachers would have us copy things out of the Bible for practice. We'd write them down as the teacher read them, and I was sure to keep them all." 

"That's so wonderful. I could never do that." 

"But I know you can read. If you can read, then you can write." 

"Well, no," she said, "It's a much different thing..." 

"But you know what the word looks like," Adrian argued. "Once you know that, it's a simple thing to write it yourself. Let's see... 'Dog.' You know how it looks, so try it." 

"Hm?" 

"Just trace it with your finger on the table. Come now, try it." 

Joan paused for just a moment, then set her jaw at a determined angle, leaned over, and traced d-o-g on the table with her finger. 

"Now, see, that's just right!" 

She laughed. "Well, what would I want to write about anyway?" 

"Hm..." Adrian leaned back in his chair, thinking. "If I were to go home, it would save you a lot of money. You wouldn't have to hire someone to write your letters to me, and then you could write anything you wanted, and not have to be embarassed about saying it to a scribe." 

"You think I'd send you a letter I'd be embarassed to have someone see...?" 

"Well, I didn't mean anything by it!" he said, with a nervous laugh. 

Joan started laughing, too, to let him know it was a joke, and the two of them had a little laugh together. 

"So when might you be going home?" Joan asked, starting to sew again. 

"Father still hasn't mentioned any plans of it," Adrian said. He sat and watched her in the candlelight, which tinted her face gold. Her laugh had left a hint of blush in her cheeks. 

"And he still says he won't consider letting you marry until after that? What does he want you to do? Dear me, I hope he doesn't have some girl picked out for you." 

"He says he doesn't." 

"Well, you should ask him when he'll have you home and give his blessing, then." 

"I do, everytime I write to him." 

"Ouch!" Joan jerked her hand away from her sewing and sucked on her finger. 

"Are you all right?" 

"I just pricked myself," she said, and held out her finger. 

_Why did she have to do that...?_ Her finger was moist from her mouth, and so the blood from the pinprick spread slowly at first, tinting her fingertip pink like her blushing cheeks, before pooling into that jewel-red drop. Adrian took her hand in his, and found himself bringing it closer to his face. 

_I want to know how it tastes!_

He jumped up from his seat, letting go of Joan's hand so abruptly that it was as if he had roughly tossed it aside. 

"Adrian?" 

"I'm sorry, I'm just... I feel a bit faint all of a sudden. Please excuse me, just a moment..." With that, he hurried into the next room and shut the door behind him. 

There were no lights in that room, but that was better. Less chance of being seen. Hurriedly, he pulled the glove off of his right hand and bit down on it, feeling two of his teeth sink in, as they had so many---too many---times before. 

But this time was different. For the first time, the sweet taste of his own blood flooding his mouth was not enough. The hunger, yes, it could satisfy, but not the craving, not the curiosity. _Joan... So sweet and beautiful, I want to know... The taste of her blood... No! Not Joan! Oh, God, please not Joan! I love her! I love her... so I have to know..._

He sucked desperately on his hand, determined not to let it go until this feeling was gone, totally, utterly gone. His hand throbbed with pain, from the desperate crushing force of his teeth, and from the way he sucked the blood from it, violently, mercilessly in his panic. 

The world around him swept around as if in a storm, and he fell to his knees, with his free hand on the floor to steady himself. 

"Adrian?" he distantly heard Joan's voice from the other room. 

But it was all chaos. Nothing could be seen, nothing could be understood but the relentless voices of his mind. _No, Joan, don't come in here! No, I can't find out! Not Joan..._ Biting down harder, sucking harder on his hand, and protecting Joan, protecting her from himself... He ceased even to understand how these things connected as they spun faster and faster around him, buffeting at his mind like a storm-wind until all meaning and knowing was blown away. 

_Continued in Part 2_

Footnotes:

*The title, at least as it's intended, means "In the middle." Ever notice how it's the people in the middle who are always the really interesting ones? Half-Espers, Half-Dragons... Heck, even back in ancient Greece Hercules was an interesting one because he was Half-God. Oh, and Spock, half-Vulcan. You know how this fits in. Or if not, keep reading. 


	2. Part the Second

En Medias

by Half-Esper Laura  
Based on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (and a little bit on Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse) by Konami

Part 2 of 6

***

_Joan told me later that she heard me fall. Within a few minutes she found me there, unconscious, and took me to the infirmary. Of course, the game was all up then. With the wounds on my hand and blood in my mouth, and these hollow teeth... The diagnosis of vampirism was swift and certain._

_When the doctor pronounced this sentence to me, I was overcome with despair. I thought surely I was about to die, like my mother did._

_But that was not the case. I still have not decided whether it was lucky for me or not, but the doctors, and the priest whom they consulted, supposed that I could not be a true vampire. This because I was able to walk in the sunlight and read from the Bible, and perhaps they gave me some small measure of credit for sacrificing myself to avoid harming Joan. But it was the idea of a vampire that could go to church and read scriptures that seemed most unbelievable to them._

_That's foolishness, by the way. It takes a little care, but my father has read the Bible. He has even quoted it to me. Don't misunderstand me, Holy Symbols are perhaps the greatest defense against vampires, but don't focus on their effect to the exclusion of anything else._

_In any case, it was decided that my vampirism was mild and curable. I was uncertain whether this was good news. Cures for Lycanthropy have included amputating the patient's arms and legs. I must give my doctors some credit for good sense, however, although it was little help to me. They even devised a treatment that would not likely be fatal to an innocent human who was subjected to it. It was reasoned that, as vampires were destroyed by sunlight, if I were exposed to the sun's rays, that vampire-element that was plaguing me would simply burn away and be gone._

_I have mentioned, I trust, that I have burned easily in sunlight since my childhood? And I recall noting just now how their good sense and benevolence in designing the treatment did me no good._

_I was bound to a sort of plank, clothed in the bare minimum of dignity, and set out at dawn, in a place where I was not on public display---I thank God for this, at least---but would experience the direct light of the sun for as much of the day as possible._

_Have you ever been burned? Gotten your hand too close to a fireplace, or made a wrong move while cooking or boiling water for tea, or anything? Then you at least know what a particular kind of pain it is. By sundown of the first day I was nearly out of my mind with it._

_And Joan, dear, blessed Joan, she was there, and William and Robert and Richard. And when at sundown they brought me back inside, Joan did her best to apply medicine to my burns, but it stung so terribly that I fear I didn't repay her very well for that kindness. I cried out in pain long into the night, until at last I fell senseless from exhaustion._

_In the morning, my burns seemed miraculously improved. At the time it was taken as a sign of the treatment progressing, although now I know that this was caused by the properties of the vampire blood, not the reasserting of the human._

_And of course, I wasn't cured yet._

***

"Yes, this is very good," the doctor said. "Last night he manifested the wounds the sun had done to this vampire-infection, but see today, his human body is rejuvenating itself." 

Adrian heard them speaking distantly. The doctor's words seemed to be true. The last he remembered, his entire body had been alive with burning pain, and now it was peaceful, although every inch of his skin felt tender, like the new skin uncovered by a scrape. 

"Hear that, Adrian? It'll be all right." Joan was looking down at him from above his head, so his half-opened eyes saw her face upside down. She was stroking his hair. 

"So it's cleared up, then?" William asked. 

"We can't know for sure. I wouldn't declare it gone until he stops burning in the sun. Tonight we'll see." 

The doctor's response sent Adrian's groggy mind reeling, struggling to right itself. "Tonight? You're doing it again today?" 

"Yes, of course." 

"No! No, I can't! I'll die!" 

"M'Lord, if we wait you could relapse," the doctor warned. 

"When evil once defeated reasserts itself, it often roots itself even more deeply than before," the attending priest concurred. 

"No, the night is as long as I am willing to risk waiting between treatments, and that only by necessity." 

"Please, no!" Adrian cried. "I won't be able to stand it! If you care for my life, then for God's sake, don't do this!" 

"Someone in your condition should not speak the name of God," the priest insisted. "Only trust Him. Bear this mildly and you will be saved." 

Joan moved aside as two attendants took hold of the plank to which he was tied and began to carry it to the doorway. 

"NO!!" he screamed. "STOP! I WON'T GO OUT THERE AGAIN! I WON'T LET YOU KILL ME!!!" He writhed in his bonds, straining against them, his face pinched tightly and holding his breath, until at last he let it out in a roar of effort and rage. As one, everyone watching jumped back from him in terror as that cry opened his mouth wide to reveal _fangs_---Adrian's eyeteeth had lengthened a quarter-inch beyond the rest of his teeth, into wicked, needle-sharp points, and when he opened his eyes, they glowed blood-red. 

The attendants managed to keep their hold on him until he twisted his head around and snapped at the nearest wrist. Only by jerking his hand away instantly did the man avoid a bite, and even then one pointed fang opened a cut as it grazed across his flesh. But in saving himself, he dropped Adrian to the floor and sent him tumbling out of the grip of the other attendant. 

With another bellow of rage, he pulled against the ropes that held him back, so powerfully that they groaned and bit into his arms, and ruby-red drops of blood trickled from them across his pale white skin. At last the cords could not stand against his wrath, and strand after strand of them snapped until they lay limp over his shoulders, and he pushed himself away from the wooden plank, his arms freed. 

Everyone in the room screamed and scattered away from him like sheep from a wolf, except one. 

Adrian screamed in agony and collapsed as the priest pushed the crucifix against his skin. He picked himself up again to find it dangling in front of his face. Almost tangibly, the violence bled out of him; his eyes faded to their usual silver-blue, and he stared at the cross, transfixed. 

"My son." The priest began to speak as the others watched him apprehensively from the periphery of the room. "There are two paths open to you. You can go out into the sun, the light of Our Lord, and allow it to burn this corruption away from you. Perhaps it is true what you say, that you will die, but what is death to you if you save your soul? By your death you will rid yourself of evil and enter into the presence of God. 

"The other path is to remain in here, shielded in the darkness. If this is what you choose, then you choose to accept the evil within you. Then, you are truly a vampire, and we will deal with you accordlingly. 

"So, which do you choose? Do you want to be cured?" 

Adrian let his head fall, and his breath came in gasps as he began to weep. "Yes. Yes, I want to be cured." 

"I knew that you would choose righteously," the priest said. 

"But please... Father, before I go, please give me the Anointing of the Sick.* I know I won't survive..." 

"Yes, of course I will," the priest said. "I see that you are wise and firm in your faith. It is a tragedy that such a curse should befall one such as yourself." 

***

_You look a bit skeptical. I must stress to you that I truly believed that I would be cured. Even now, looking back on it, it brings back the pain I felt the day I discovered that there was no cure for the curse I bear._

_But I believed at that time that there was, and even if I found it in death it was worth it to me---it still would be, if I could give up my life to become no more or less than human. And at that time this faith allowed me to go back willingly, out in the sunlight that I knew would be the end of me. My vampire-half had exhausted itself, so there was nothing left to save me._

_By noon that day I could hardly even feel the pain, only the life ebbing out of my body. I was only waiting to die. But I was not unhappy. In my delirium, I dreamed of my Mother. I thought of being rid of my curse and of seeing her again, and I was content._

_But at around mid-day, I was brought back inside. At first I didn't understand why, but as I came to my senses, I was told that an envoy had arrived from my father, and they insisted on bringing me home. Their story to the doctors was that, since vampires were more common in this country, the doctors here were adept at curing vampirism, and so everyone was assured that I would be in good hands._

_They really should have found the coincidence suspicious, that my father would send for me unannounced at just the time that this was happening. Only supernatural means could have allowed him to find out about my predicament and send someone for me in the space of a day and a half._

_Again, I was seduced by the promise of a cure, and one that wouldn't kill me was all the better. So I bid farewell to the friends of my youth-I had no idea that it would be so long before I saw them again-and set out for my father's estate, blissfully unaware of what awaited me. Before I left, I promised Joan that I would secure my father's blessing for our marriage, if she would still have me after all of this. She said she would, bless her soul. She even gave me her necklace, to be sure that I wouldn't forget._

_The trip seemed to go by very quickly, but I didn't think much about it. I'd been burned within an inch of my life, badly enough that even vampire blood would take some time to recover from it, so I imagined that I had spent most of the journey unconscious, and indeed I was sort of coming and going for awhile. I don't even remember being brought into the castle. I must have awakened and found myself there several times, however, because I believe I was already used to it the night that I awoke and found my father at my bedside._

_At first he tried to hide everything from me, and brought it off, if you can believe that. I fear to ask where he hid all the reanimated corpses. But I ate dinner with him and we talked at night, and I asked him if I might marry, and he said that I should know more about my inheritance first, and that he would reveal it all in good time. I also asked him repeatedly when he would take me to see a doctor about my affliction. He avoided the issue with answers like "when it gets a little cooler," "a day when the sun isn't so bright, to keep you from burning," or simply, "in a few days." I grew more and more impatient with this, until the first words out of my mouth when I saw him each evening were that question._

_And finally, as he was wont to do, he grew frustrated with me._

***

"Do you want to know the truth?" Vlad asked, stopping in the hallway and turning to face his son directly. 

"Yes!" Adrian insisted. "I don't understand why you keep putting it off while I feel as if I can't bear this horrible condition another day!" 

"Then feel differently." 

"Excuse me?" 

"There is no doctor, not in this country, or in Britain, or in all the world who can cure your craving for blood." 

Adrian only stared at him for a moment, his mind struggling to grasp this revelation. "What are you saying?" 

"I'm saying that there is no cure," his father repeated. "Vampirism is a part of what you are. You will simply have to live with it." 

"No! That's... That can't be true!" He buried his face in his hands and turned away, wandering down the hallway as if fleeing blindly and slowly. "Oh, God, how did this happen? What did I ever do to bring this on myself?" 

"It has been with you from birth," his father said, pursuing him closely. "...As the child of a vampire." 

He immediately whipped around. "My mother was not a vampire!! I don't care what anyone said about her, there was nothing evil in her! No witchcraft or vampirism or---" 

"Calm down, Adrian," Vlad ordered, taking him by the shoulders with a strong grip. "What you say is true. Your mother was not a vampire." 

At this retraction of the imagined insult, Adrian was able to calm down and slip back into despair at his irredeemable fate. A vampire forever? Bound to crave blood---human blood---forever... If this was the kind of life he was fated for, if this was the kind of creature he had been from birth, then why hadn't he died in the sun like the monster he was? Why was it his mother who had been killed, and not him? 

And then he began to realize that he felt no warmth from his father's hands, although they were still gripping his shoulders. It recalled winter evenings at home as a child, in his father's lap and wrapped in blankets against the cold of it. While he had his mother's features, it was from his father that he had inherited his strikingly pale complexion, and then, as now, their visits were only at night... 

He looked up into Vlad's eyes, and somehow, without words, the confirmation was there. He opened his mouth to scream, but found his voice, his feet, his entire body frozen with terror, unable even to take his gaze away from the vampire's eyes. 

"My son." With those words Vlad wrapped his arms around Adrian, with one hand cradling the back of his head, and held him close. 

The paralysis fell away, and immediately he began to struggle, trying to pull himself away from his father's abhorrent embrace. "Let me go!" 

"I'm sorry, Adrian. It was wrong for me to send you away for so long, to let the humans corrupt your thinking. But I won't let you go again." 

Vlad's grip was inhumanly powerful, and Adrian was helpless to extricate himself from it. The words he was hearing were unreal, like a nightmare. It seemed impossible for such evil to be uttered by a real creature. Such was more fit for the villain of some allegorical morality play... 

"Now I will show you your true inheritance. I will show you how far you sit above those human sheep who killed your mother, and who would have killed you, as well. Well, don't worry. You'll see them reap the reward that is due them. The streets of their pathetic habitations will run red with blood, until neither of us will ever go hungry for it." 

Unable to free himself, unable to raise a hand against this monster, Adrian wept with helplessness. "No, please..." he pleaded through his tears. "Don't do this! Please, let me go!" 

But Vlad only held him in those inescapable arms and tenderly stroked his head, running gloved fingers through his thick black hair. 

***

_The secret was broken, and over the course of days, the full horror into which I had been delivered was presented to my view. Suddenly I was surrounded by the undead, and all manner of evil creatures, with whom my father consorted as allies and friends. At first I despaired. I began to think that the exposure to the sun must have driven me insane, and that these horrors must be the product of my own diseased mind, but gradually I realized that there was too much permanence and substance about them, too much regularity, and yet also too much unnatural perversity for them to be imagined things. Worse yet, I learned that these monsters were being turned loose upon humanity, that as retribution for my mother's death and my own mistreatment, my father had declared bloody vengeance on the entire human race. I tried to dissuade him. I tried to tell him that neither Mother nor myself would approve of such violence, but he would not be moved._

_Even as I began to understand that I had been brought to the gates of Hell itself, I remained strong in my faith, and even grew in my determination not to lose my soul to my vampirism, or to my father and his minions. This determination sustained me, and yet I lived a miserable life, mentally and spiritually fighting in this way without a moment's rest. I wrote a letter to Joan, telling her that I would not be able to marry her, no, in fact I could never see her again, and that it was of the most grave importance that she make no attempt to contact me or seek me out. But I couldn't bring myself to send back her necklace. See, here I still have it. Because it's a cross, it's painful for me to touch it directly, but I always wear it despite that.**_

_But eventually, as I severed all connections and found myself alone in this nightmare-world, responsible for no one but myself, my sorrow turned into bitterness. If I died fighting against this evil, what did it matter to me? What had I to lose except the endless, wretched procession of days that my life had become?_

_No, Trevor Belmont was later. But I did become very combative and rebellious. Outspoken, if you can imagine me thus. It was at this time that I began calling myself "Alucard." I won't insult your intelligence by pointing out the wordplay. Suffice to say my point in this was the complete rotation, my declaration that I was the opposite of my father._

_It's Adrian. Thank you. I'm not sure... I think that the way my life has developed, I want to save that name apart and protect it from harm, because... Well, perhaps because that's what my mother always called me, and what Joan always called me. It sounds silly, I know..._

_I would wish for the boldness I posessed in those days, if I didn't know it had its source in my hopeless abandonment of my life and future. But still, if only I had been able to keep that spirit of action..._

***

Alucard looked down on his father's sleeping form, repulsed as ever by everything surrounding it. Rather than a bed, Dracula lay in a box like a corpse, except that the box was half-full of earth, packed and smooth from being used in this way so many days. Except for the candle that Alucard had brought to it, the room was dark as a tomb, sealed deep inside Castlevania, far away from the sun outside. 

Thinking of himself as the child of this creature still filled Alucard with shame and anger whenever he thought of it, and yet Dracula insisted on treating him like a child, like his own child, surrounding him with items of horror and disgust in a twisted attempt to coddle him. It seemed somehow wrong that the one spark of humanity the ancient vampire posessed would be his undoing, but how could it be otherwise? Who else would Dracula allow access to the chamber where he slept, except his own son? So whatever injustice it might represent, it was to that son that the duty fell. 

Alucard paused for only a moment to gather his resolve before producing the carefully-procured and carefully-hidden oak stake from his cloak and raising it over his father's chest. 

Just as he was about to strike, his wrist was captured by a skeleton hand, and Alucard whipped around to find a skeletal figure hovering over him. The animated bones of the dead had become all too familiar a sight to him, but this was different, this was a creature of such darkness and unnature that it lived in this skeleton form, draped with fine and tattered robes, and holding a scythe over one shoulder-the very image of Death itself. 

Alucard truly intended to be brave, to accept his fate gracefully. Hadn't he known this attack was a dangerous move? Hadn't he nothing left to lose? But despite himself he was crippled with terror and dropped the stake on the floor. "No! Please!" he cried, though the words were not in his mind. "I don't want to die! Please don't kill me!" 

The skeleton hand released his wrist and let him stumble back against the nearest wall, cowering in fear that he did not intend or understand. That same hand took him by the chin and raised his face so that his eyes were forced to meet the empty, red-glowing eye-sockets. 

"If you were anyone else, I would kill you," the skeleton said. "But your father would be angry if I killed his child, even for such a foolish act as this. Go back to your room, Boy. When your father wakes I will tell him of this and he can deal with you." 

Alucard accepted this and hurried from the room with a strange mixture of relief and dread, thick also with shame at having acted with such cowardice. Such was his haste that he forgot the candle and felt his way through the darkness back to his room, where he threw himself on the bed. He buried his face in his pillow and obscured himself with blankets as a child would do, trying to shut out everything until he had to face the evening. 

***

_When my father came that night he was surprisingly lenient with me, but he didn't give me that sort of chance again. It seems odd, given the treatment I recieved for lesser things. Dracula is not known for having a peaceful temper. At times my rebellious words angered him, and I had the bruises to show for it. Normally it was a backhand or open-handed blow across my face. He is inhumanly strong, so such was enough to knock me across a room, but it was nothing I couldn't stand. In fact his abuse perhaps strengthened me, as the suffering of the early Christian martyrs seems to have deepened their faith. After such incidents he would tend to avoid me for awhile; I believe it was guilt._

_At times I consider such small sparks of humanity. When I think of my father, they are like stars. Light is light, but the night is still dark._

_As my time there stretched on into years, my opposition to him was as a wind against a mountain. I beat myself against him day after day, and nothing ever came of it. It was only a matter of time until he took the fight out of me. I could even tell you the night that he did it._

***

"I don't even understand how I could have been born!" Alucard said, as his father led him yet again through the corridor to the dining room. "I can't imagine my mother with a monster like you." 

Dracula stopped and turned to face him. "What did you say?" 

Alucard didn't back down. "My mother was the most kind and virtuous person I have ever known. I can't imagine how she would love such a vile creature as you!" 

His father took a step toward him and he tensed, ready for the blow that he knew was coming as Dracula raised his hand. But in the next moment, it was not on his cheek that he felt that hand, but around his throat. Before he could react, he was lifted from the floor and thrust up against a wall, trapped against it so that that hand still shoving him back compressed his throat and began to choke off his breath. 

"You forget so easily," Dracula hissed, leaning close to Alucard's face, squeezing his throat just a bit harder to silence his struggles to interrupt. "When those vermin who killed your mother left you out in the forest to die, when those fools of doctors left you to burn to death in the sun, to whom did you owe your life then? I didn't have to spare you. I still don't! I could kill you here and now, and at times you make it tempting, you ingrateful little wretch! At the very least I ought to reach into your throat and tear out that waspish voice of yours." 

By the end, Alucard could hardly hear his words, the desperation for air rang so loudly in his mind. His father glared at him for another torturously long moment as he pleaded silently, his mouth forming words without the breath to voice them. 

_Please let me go... Please don't kill me!_

Dracula's face twitched, and he threw his son aside, onto the floor. He departed down the hallway with the resolute swiftness of anger and disgust. 

Alucard lay there for some time, gasping to catch his breath, before finally picking himself up and making his way back to his tower room. 

***

_Perhaps it was that this, combined with my earlier attempt on my father's life and subsequent introduction to his friend Death, made me realize that no matter how noble and abandoned my intentions, the idea of dying was terrifying to me. Or perhaps it was the utter helplessness that I felt in that moment, as my father told me---and quite convincingly demonstrated---that it would be but a small effort on his part to end my life, that all the force I could muster against him could be crushed so easily._

_But whatever realization it was that caused it, it was on that night that I learned to keep silent. From then on I did what I was supposed to do. When my father came at night, I had dinner with him without protest, and when I spoke to him I said only polite and substanceless things. As time wore on, I think he was unsatisfied with me acting that way as well, but if so, he brought it on himself._

_I began sleeping at night. There's no sun in Castlevania anyway, as you've seen for yourself. This way he and I only saw each other at dinner, although now and then he would come in very late, thinking that I was asleep, and sit by my bed at night. Most often I was laying awake, or was awakened by his approach, but I only lay still when this happened and pretended to sleep._

_I apparently put on a convincing show for him, but I was... very disurbed. Every day that I lived in that castle, I felt myself come a little bit closer to madness. I went through periods of heavy drinking, to make myself senseless of my misery, but when I felt the thirst for blood coming upon me, I gave it up, afraid of what I might do with my sense and will thus impaired. At those times I would spend entire miserable days laying in bed, and would bite myself until my hands and forearms ran blood and stained the bedsheets with it. Then that evening, I would bind it all up with bandages and put on my long sleeves and black gloves and talk to my father as if nothing had happened, all the while feeling the pain in my arms and hands and thinking I might not last through the night, through the next day..._

_Yes, I did try. There were months that passed as one long, subtle, frustrated escape attempt. I had lost the courage for a bold move, but I spent a great deal of time exploring the castle, testing the feasibility of any exits I might find. And in the end, I was forced to conclude that there was no escape. I could get out into the courtyard, but not past the walls or the gates. Only in the peripheral towers were there windows to the outside, and these were unfailingly barred shut._

_The window in my own room was one of these, looking out above a cliff with forested hills below. I would spend days sitting at that window, longingly looking out. Once the Librarian told me I had been doing this for so long and had leaned against the window-bars so that the pattern of them was impressed on my face. Of course, with no mirrors in the castle, I couldn't really tell._

_Oh, you didn't meet the Librarian? He tends the castle library, obviously, and although he's human, he's even older than I am. The story I heard was that he was an insatiably curious scholar, and when he grew old, he lamented that he would die with so many mysteries still unknown to him, and wished that he could live forever so that he would have time to know everything in the world. Dracula was amused by this wish, or so the story goes, and granted it. And from that time on, he has been bound to the castle library, but cannot die until the day that he knows everything in the world. I don't think he tries very hard at it anymore._

_He is an ally of my father's, but I think of him as an old friend. In the times that I was just telling you about, I began to spend most of my time studying in the library, still being drawn to scholarly pursuits as I was in my years in England. Of course he posessed knowledge of all kinds, so he and I spent many hours conversing about art and science and philosophy. And it was he alone of all creatures who knew what was truly becoming of me. I did not hide myself from him, as I did from my father, and it was the Librarian who witnessed my daily small descents into madness and despair._

_I think that sometimes he told my father about such things at night, after I had gone to bed. At times things that Father said hinted that he knew, but still... He was so thick-headed about it. It was as if he couldn't wrap his mind around the idea that I couldn't stand it there, or more likely he failed to do so because he didn't want it to be so. But he was so shocked when... Well, suffice to say it was my last great act of defiance. I won't say anymore about it._

_I told you, I don't want to talk about it._

_So, what was after that...?_

_..._

_Oh, God, now that I've thought of it I won't be able to have it out of my head until I've said it... That last great act of defiance. Of all the things I have done in my life, that is the one that causes me the most shame. Perhaps it shouldn't be so. I've committed worse sins, I suppose, but it is the most embarassing._

_No, I think there's some reason why I'm telling you this. I don't know what it is. Perhaps there is something to be learned from my whole sordid history. Or if, as I originally thought, the point of this exercise is to convince you of why I should disappear, I suppose the most horrid of illustrations would be the ones most suited to that point._

_There's nothing to gain by dancing around it. I... I tried to kill myself. Yes, I know that suicide is a mortal sin, but I had been trapped in that hellmouth of a castle for years at that time. I was daily going mad with the feeling that its evil was seeping into me. I didn't see what better choice I had. Perhaps, in the long run, it was the only way to save myself from falling into even greater sins. I think I was mistaken about this now. Of course, it's easy to see in hindsight what a wretched thing it was..._

_But that's not the worst of it. The worst is that I survived. ... I hanged myself, and I didn't die. No, you see, vampires don't breathe. They don't need to. I suppose they are such demonic creatures that the sustaining presence of God in the air we breathe is beyond them. It seems I inherited some part of this. And yet, it was so painful! It was as painful as you can imagine that death by hanging would be, and there was no merciful death to end it. I'd been choked before---you remember the incident with my father that I mentioned..? I knew it would be torture. I knew it would feel like forever, and so I didn't even realize that anything was wrong until I heard the clock strike the hour. Then I knew it had been far too long, that there was no way I should have been alive that long... But I was, and so I remained. I was in so much pain, I wasn't even able to free myself, and just stayed there like that for hours and hours..._

_That night my father found me. By that time I had fallen still with exhaustion, so he must have thought that I was dead when he saw me. Although I'm ashamed, I must admit to taking some perverse pleasure in giving him such a fright. I don't remember his precise reaction, though. All I remember is being able to breathe again._

_When I came to my senses, I was in my bed at night. I think a day or two might have passed. For weeks my throat was unimaginably sore, and I was unable to speak above a whisper. I'm sure I must have borne some hideous marks from this, but I never saw them. There were no mirrors in the castle, and from then on I avoided looking at glass or water or polished marble or anywhere that I might see my reflection because I knew they were there and I didn't want to see. Years later when I was at last presented with a mirror, I was still half-afraid to look into it for fear there would be some ghastly red mark on my throat. Even then, I was never totally satisfied until Trevor---the only other person to whom I have ever related this deplorable incident---assured me that he saw no sign of it. He took my chin in his hands, and tipped it up, and turned it this way and that, and even felt around my neck with his fingers, and told me he would never have known._

_I do bear one "scar" from it however. I wasn't quite so tall before that._

_I spent a good deal of time in bed after it happened. Partly because I didn't feel well, and partly because I was so eaten up with shame and guilt, I didn't want to get out of bed and show my face to anyone. And most of these nights were ones that my father chose to come and sit by my bed while he thought I was sleeping._

***

Alucard lay still in bed, chest down and head twisted to the side in a way that pained his still-sore throat, but it couldn't be helped. His father sat beside him quietly, as he had so many nights before. Dracula didn't even breathe, hardly made any sound at all, but Alucard could keenly feel his presence, and feared to move lest his father realize that he wasn't asleep. At the least, this position placed his back toward his visitor, and his face tucked away from view. 

"Why did you do this?" Dracula asked softly. 

Alucard felt his heart sink with dread. Did his father know he was awake...? He remained still and silent. 

"Why would you do such a thing? And every day you go out of your way to tell me nothing is wrong. I have done everything in my power to make you happy. What haven't I given you? What have I done so wrong that you would torment me this way?" 

Alucard realized with relief that his father spoke in the detatched tone of someone not expecting answers to his questions. Dracula still thought that he was asleep. He felt that cold, heavy hand rest on his shoulder and rub it up and down. 

"Why have you closed yourself to me? ...I remember when you were a little boy, how you would smile and laugh when I came into the house, how you sat and fell asleep on my lap... I haven't changed so much since then. What happened that made you change so? What happened that made you hate me? Tell me what's wrong." 

Alucard could no longer hold his peace. "Do you really want me to tell you?" he asked, in a hoarse whisper. 

A very small pause. "Yes." 

"Everything is wrong. I can't bear living in this evil place." 

"This is your home." 

"No, it isn't. It's my prison. You're keeping me here against my will, and I can't stand it. If you're asking what I want that you haven't given me, I want the wind, and the sunlight, and the world---" At that point his voice broke, sending him into a painful fit of coughing. 

"You're very tired," Dracula said. 

"I would say this at any time. I think this every waking moment." 

"And you want me to send you out there, among those human beasts? Do you forget why I brought you home?" 

The thought in Alucard's mind was that it was his father who was the beast, but he didn't say it. He was in too much pain already to risk being struck, or worse. 

"It will all come in its own time. When humans are no longer the rulers of this world, then it will be safe for you, and then you will have the whole world, as you say." 

Alucard still didn't speak, but tensed and grasped his hair in consternation. 

"Can't you understand? I'm not doing this as a vampire, I'm doing this as your father. I want you to be happy." 

"I was happy before you brought me here." 

"Even when they bound you out in the sun to die?" It was a statement, not a question, as if there were only one answer. 

But there wasn't only one answer. Alucard thought of those days in England, with friends and a beloved... Even remembering those days in the sun, when he had been so sure that he would be freed from his curse, that he would see God... Even looking back on that filled him with regret at its loss, and he sobbed against his pillow. "Yes." 

Dracula paused for a few moments. "Will you do this again?" 

Alucard shook his head. 

"Will you try to kill yourself again?" 

He shook his head again. 

Dracula sighed heavily, and didn't ask any more questions. 

Alucard could still feel his father's presence and silent watchfulness as he wept. It hurt so badly to swallow back his tears... 

_Continued in Part 3_

Footnotes:

*Anointing of the Sick: one of the sacraments of the Catholic Church, intended for those who are facing imminent death or serious risk thereof. I think it was actually called "Extreme unction" this long ago, but I use the modern term. 

**Check your equipment before you meet Death at the beginning of Symphony of the Night. Alucard starts the game equipped with the "Necklace of J." 


	3. Part the Third

En Medias

by Half-Esper Laura  
Based on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (and a little bit on Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse) by Konami

Part 3 of 6

***

_I was sincere about not doing it again. I couldn't bring myself to, after that. Not that my life felt any less burdensome, but... On the one hand, I was terrified of death, and on the other, I was now terrified of survival should I attempt suicide again. After such a horrific experience as I had, I was always forced to ask myself, if I thought of climbing up to the top of a watchtower and throwing myself from its height, what if it didn't kill me? What if I hit the ground, and my body was broken, and I didn't die, but only lay there like that until I burned up in the sun or was killed by wild animals, or, worse yet, found by my father and brought back inside? No, I didn't try again._

_And of course it didn't matter what I said to him, or even what I did. He wouldn't change his mind. I was to stay in the castle, humans were vermin to be destroyed._

_He... I think he made some effort to be kind to me, but it was a rather pathetic effort. Even if he said he wanted to care for me and protect me, nothing would sway him from the path of his own interests and desires. He wanted to love me, but was unwilling to spare any true sign of affection. If he loved me at all, he did it in the way that a child loves a doll, taking it as a thing from which she wants to receive filial love and painting that love upon it in her mind. But I was not a blank doll to have emotions ascribed to me without my consent. Because of that, I don't think my father has ever known how to deal with me. I wonder if he has any idea at all how to be kind, or to care about another person. It is for this reason that I still cannot imagine my mother and her perfect love together with him._

_But no, even as shocked as my father apparently was by that last great act of defiance, it didn't change a thing. Before long I recovered from the injuries I had done myself, and went back to spending my days in the library._

_The Library of Castlevania, by the way, is such that the Librarian could concievably know everything in the world from there. There are certain books which, if so commanded, will transform themselves into any book ever written. You could tell it to be the Gospel of John or the notebook of Da Vinci or the complete works of Shakespeare. The Librarian is very jealous about those books; I could only use them with his direct supervision._

_But more importantly, the Library of Castlevania is the best in the world for learning about the occult. Vampires, demons, monsters of all sorts. For practical reasons, I focussed my study in that area, wanting to know more about what I was dealing with in my father and his minions, as well as the cursed half of my own blood. I even held out some tiny glimmer of hope that I might learn of a way to put an end to Dracula and his evil. But I studied this very guardedly, lest this practical interest turn to temptation. There is an adage: "He who studies evil is studied by evil."*_

_I did indeed learn the nature and use of some of the powers that were my inheritance as the child of a vampire. I learned especially the disciplines of changing my shape, although I was not yet able to transform into a wolf or bat, as I can now._

_But even in Castlevania's Library, information about my particular half-blooded species, the Dhampir, was scarce. What was there explained its own sparseness by saying that dhampir are exceedingly rare. I was able to find reference to the powers such creatures as myself are known to posess, and did my best to master them. I refined my ability to sense the presence of vampires, to resist their powers, and even studied the dhampir ability to kill vampires without the need for a stake or flame or such means. None of these skills, however, improved my courage. I still couldn't bring myself to oppose my father._

_And whereas those knowledges should have been liberating, other discoveries that I made in my reading had very much the opposite effect. It was then that I discovered the ability of vampires to mentally enslave victims who drink the vampire's blood. It induces a sort of love for the vampire, false but insanely powerful. When I discovered this, I became consumed with fear that my father would turn to that as a way to deal with me, to literally force me to love him, as he wished that I would. As a result I became fanatically suspicious of what I ate and drank, refusing anything that might hide a taste of his blood. I totally gave up alcohol, abstained from meat, from anything reddish in color, from any food whose flavor or composition I judged could hide blood in any way. Before long I limited myself to milk and a certain small assortment of vegetables._

_And in this I think you can see that I was truly beginning to lose my sanity. In a way it's impressive to me that I held onto it for so long. I had lived in Castlevania for nearly ten years before this._

_But that was not the coup-de-grace. That was something else that I learned in my study of the nature of vampires. I have mentioned it freely until now, but for me at that time, it was a shock to learn the true nature of a vampire's inner being._

_There are those who think that when a person is Embraced---made into a vampire---that they themselves are turned into a hellish monster. This is ridiculous. Vampires are powerful creatures, to be sure, but a vampire does not have the power to snatch your soul from the path to Heaven. No, when a person is made into a vampire, their human soul departs to its eternal reward, and a demon enters the body to take its place. It has the mind and memories of the person who was Embraced, but at the core of its being, it is not the same person, but a demon of Hell._

_On the face of it, this may not seem so disturbing. From the perspective of someone who has killed vampires, it in fact alleviates a certain amount of guilt._

_But when I read this, the thought that was eventually my undoing was, "What about me?" Yes, I am "demonspawn" in the true sense of it. As the child of such a creature, could I, without knowing, be a demon infesting the earth? Perhaps if I had been more rational at the time I could have assured myself about this. Surely I would have accepted and become a part of Castlevania long before that, if I had to worry about being truly evil._

_But as it was, there was no assurance, and the implications of it were so great that I was consumed utterly by the question. I could neither eat nor sleep. Every day in the library I searched desperately for an answer, but this was something that the tiny smattering of books about dhampir did not say._

***

"Back, you! Back!" 

Alucard woke to find himself sitting in a corner of the library, the all-too-thin book about Dhampir still held in his lap. The librarian was standing over him, chasing off some of the books with a torch as they closed in predatorily, walking on the edges of their hard covers. 

"Young Master, you shouldn't fall asleep here," the old man said. 

Alucard rubbed his eyes and forced himself to stand. His legs ached with weariness. "I know..." he yawned. 

The advancing books were primarily scavengers, and began to wander off as he started moving again. 

Already he was opening the book again, his exhausted brain struggling to comprehend the words, as a climber might struggle to find purchase on the face of a cliff. There had to be some clue, somewhere. He had to find it... 

"You must get some rest!" the Librarian insisted, taking him by the shoulders and leading him away. "You've been in here day and night without without sleep for almost a week! Young Master, you'll kill yourself this way." 

"I can't sleep." His own voice sounded fuzzy and distant. "When I close my eyes my mind just keeps turning. I can't stop it." 

"The nature of your soul, yes?" 

Alucard nodded. 

"Young Master, it is better not to ask such things," the Librarian said. He led Alucard into his own firelit chambers and eased him down into a large padded chair. "The nature of our souls is something that we determine ourselves by our work to refine it, and I suppose that no one really knows the answer. Tell me, if a demon were to love, to be generous and kind, how would you then distinguish it from a human soul?" 

"A demon cannot do such things." 

"But you do, do you not?" 

"I think I do, but how do I know? How do I know that what I have come to think of as love is really love? If someone were born seeing blue as the same color that I call "yellow," and vice versa, how would they ever know? I would point to a blue object and they would say "yes," because they always heard it called "blue," and neither of us would ever know we saw it differently..." 

"Take it from an old scholar," the Librarian said, retreating into a back room. "There are questions that you are wiser for leaving alone, and that is one of them. Put your mind at ease about this." He emerged with a blanket and Alucard was too fatigued to resist as the Librarian gently pried the book from his hands and draped the blanket over him. "The nature of your soul isn't something you have no control in. Make it the best that you can make it, and leave it at that, as you were meant to do. In the end, only Death can tell you the answer." 

Alucard wanted to protest. Surely the name "demon" wouldn't exist if it didn't mean something. He thought about his father's pathetic, painful attempts at paternal affection. Could he be behaving the same way without even realizing it? But his thoughts were an indissoluble tangle, and he was unable to extract an intelligent response out of them as the warmth from the blanket dulled his mind back into exhausted slumber. 

***

_I should have listened, but no. Nothing could put my mind at ease about that question, and I, unfortunately, clung to the Librarian's assertion that "Only Death can tell you the answer." Of course, there was my father's friend. It isn't that I didn't know what the Librarian meant. I knew he meant the act of dying, not the person of Death, but even so, perhaps that person would be in a position to tell me the answer. Or else, if I had to die to know... I was so consumed with the question that I would even have done that._

_And now that I know... At times I feel that I would give almost anything to forget what I learned._

***

"You realize what you're asking, of course," Death said, with his lipless, tongueless mouth. 

Alucard nodded. 

Death considered it for a moment, floating a bit lower. His bone-fingers stroking his bone-chin made a tiny, dry, scraping sound. "I could do what you ask, but you may not survive." 

"I accept that," Alucard replied. 

"Very well, then. If you want to do this, we must wait until dark, when your Father is awake. And we must draw it up as an agreement, and you must sign it in your own blood, so that he won't blame me for your stubbornness." 

"All right." Thankfully, it was already twilight. Alucard didn't know how long he could bear the nervous anticipation, or the dread at what he was doing. 

Death summoned a skeletal servant to bring him a piece of parchment, and with a burning touch he wrote out the terms of the agreement, and the risks. When he had finished, he handed it over to Alucard, who read it over, shaking inside at the terms. _"...And even should my soul fall into nothingness or damnation, I accept this risk as part of this agreement, and hold Death unaccountable..."_

"You can always change your mind," Death said. 

_"...Thus shall I know the nature of my soul, accepting all risks of this knowledge and its revelation as my own responsibility..."_

"No. I haven't changed my mind." Alucard drew his sword and, squeezing his eyes shut, sliced across his palm, so that the blood pooled in his hand. 

Death offered him a quill. "If you're truly certain, then sign it. Sign it with your true name." 

Strangely, that condition made him pause. He had been intending to sign it "Alucard." Somehow it seemed a far more terrible thing to be doing now... _No, I can't stop now. I have to know..._ He dipped the pen in his hand, which was now cupped full of blood, and set the tip of it to the bottom of the contract. Unable to afford a pause, lest the blood should dry on the quill, he took one deep breath, shut his eyes, and wrote. 

_Adrian Fahrenheights Tepes**_

"Very well then, it is done." 

Alucard opened his eyes as Death took the contract. He felt strangely surprised and relieved. He had almost expected the act of signing the contract in itself to strike him dead. 

"And it seems darkness has fallen while we were making the arrangements," Death continued, then paused. "You can still change your mind. I have no vested interest in this matter." He held up the contract. "Only say the word. I can still tear it up." 

Alucard knew that he was going against all reason and judgement, but it couldn't change his response. "No. I want to go through with it." 

"Then don't blame me if you come to regret those words." 

Death began to move toward him, and he closed his eyes. The seconds dragged past slowly, almost hesitantly, and then he felt Death's skeleton hand rest on his chest. But the hand didn't stop there. It passed through his clothes as if they didn't exist. It sank into his chest as if his flesh and bone were water. Death's hand did not find a solid mass to act upon until it reached Alucard's heart, on which it rested with a heavy, chilling touch. 

Suddenly, there was an explosion of pain in his chest and spreading outward, or rather, an implosion. It was as if his heart had turned into a gaping hole that his body was falling into, even as the now-denied need for blood shot a wave of starving pain through to every inch of his being. Paralyzed with that pain, he was unable to stop himself from falling into that black hole and being swallowed up in darkness... 

And then there was a light. 

_The sun! It's been so long..._

_No, not the fire... Not the fire, not again!_

His heart---it seemed he had found it again---suddenly polarized, came in two. The joy! The liberating, transcendent joy of the sunlight on his face, and the warmth of its touch... But then, the mockery of that warmth, the burning kiss of a nothingness so profound it had its own kind of glow. One heart toward the sun, one heart toward the fire, and then, a stop, as if hitting the end of a tether, pulling forth dread and disappointment on the lighter end, and relief and desperation at the darker one. 

_I won't let you leave me here! I won't let you send me back! I WON'T LET YOU KILL ME!_

Half of him turned to see whose grip it was, holding him back from the glorious sunlight, and there was the one framed against the flame of nothing, holding to him like an anchor, seemingly determined that if he should fall, they should fall together. 

_Let me go! How can you hold me back?_ But even as he realized his strength, even as he realized that no one could keep him from the sun, that strength began to fade. _Let me go! Get away from me, Demon! LET ME GO!_

_No, I won't go back! Please don't leave me! Please don't make me go back!_

The sunlight was growing further away. Now even the closer part of him to it began to feel the black fire licking at him, and realized the full terror of what he was facing, but the more desperately, the more fiercely he tried to shake the demon off of him, the more it held him fast, the more it dragged him down with it. 

_**No! Please, let me go!**_

_**Please! Don't kill me!**_

The sun-warmed ground was slipping away beneath their feet. _Oh, God! Oh, God, help me!_ His two voices echoed together. _Someone save me! Someone let me see the sun...!_

The roar of damnation grew softer, but at the same time, the air around both of them grew cold and solid. The intensity of sensation died away, and despite themselves, they both clung together as the only warm and living thing in reach as both fell, or were dragged, not up into the light or down into the darkness, but sideways, into some labyrinth of dead matter. It surrounded them, not truly dead at all, but cold and heavy. Tangible. Material. Dragging them out of the cosmos of existence into a tiny chamber of material touch, material sound; his eyes sprang open to images of material light. 

To him, the scream he uttered as sensation fell away, that too was a material thing. But anyone hearing it could percieve the soul inside it all too well. 

***

_It was all such a blur. It was all so... So alien. No, not alien at all, but so familiar that it seemed alien. It was so far beyond words. It took me some time to make sense of it. It took me some time to make sense of anything at all, after that._

_But when I made sense of it, at least as best I have been able to, the gist of it is this. I have two souls. One of the human kind, the other of the vampire kind; one divine and one demonic. Can you imagine what this means? Good and evil, divided that way... I don't think about it very much. It would drive me insane if I tried to decide which of my thoughts come from one or the other, or both, or how much of each, and how do I know if the thoughts I think are human are actually demon... And it makes me sick inside, that I almost lost my soul, my human soul, discovering this thing that I was never meant to know. God save me, demanding an answer to such a question might be a mortal sin in itself..._

_This is a part of my point, you understand. As long as I walk the earth, a demon walks the earth. Am I supposed to accept that? Am I to be so arrogant as to say my presence is worth that?_

_By the way, that is also when I came to have this particular hair color. In my youth, my hair was black as soot, but in that moment I experienced such terror as to turn my hair white. It didn't all change at once. The black hair I already had stayed as it was, and only began to grow white, as it has ever since. When I think of it, a bit in front may have turned white after... after my previous suicide attempt, but if so it was only a bit. And now no one can tell._

_But no, I don't want to dwell on this... It would drive me mad to think too much on it. It did then, when it happened. As I said, nothing made any sense anymore. I don't remember things very clearly because they were so nebulous, so incomprehensible. It was as if I was open to all sensations, and they flooded in on me until it drowned all meaning and understanding. I don't know how long this went on... Later when I tried to account for it, I imagined that it must have been a period of weeks._

_The first things I remember after that are nonsensical things. They are enough to tell me, as the Librarian told me, that after that experience I was utterly mad. I remember dropping objects. Not losing my grip on them, but intentionally, even carefully, picking them up, holding them over the floor, and letting them fall. Teacups, butter-knives, candles, I discarded anything in this fashion. I would tear pages out of books and drop them one by one. This is the first thing that I remember. That and sitting still and quiet. I was totally passive. If someone placed me in bed, or in a chair, I stayed there. The Librarian said also that one of my particular symptoms of madness was the absence of any sort of vocalization. Even if struck, I made no sound at all._

_And my father did this in frustration at one time or another. My madness drove him somewhat frantic._

***

"What is it that you want!?" Dracula demanded. 

Adrian only stayed as he had for hours, sitting very still and quiet, with his feet drawn up in the large, cushioned chair, gazing with rapt interest at anything except his father. 

Dracula walked over to him and took his head in both hands, forcibly turning his son's face toward himself. "Listen to me! What's wrong with you?? What do you want!? Tell me!" 

For a moment, Adrian regarded him with empty, innocent eyes, then rose from the chair and walked over to his window. He pushed his face against the window-bars, looking out into the night sky. 

Dracula pushed him aside and wrapped his fingers through the window-bars. With a savage roar of effort and a groan from the distressed metal, he ripped the entire iron lattice out of the windowframe and threw it across the floor as Adrian shrank back from it in fear. 

Dracula threw the window open and looked out, but saw nothing but the moon and stars, and the forest below, touched by their pale light. "What is it??" 

Hesitantly, Adrian got up and looked out, leaning so far out the window that his father grasped the back of his night-dress to keep him from falling. At last he stood back up with an air of disappointment. 

Then, seized by a sudden idea, he crossed the room to his bed and retrieved a crumpled sheet of paper, a page torn from a book, from his pillowcase. As he returned to the windowsill, Dracula only just had time to see that the page was devoted to an illuminated-manuscript image of the sun before Adrian threw it out the window at the night sky. 

Together they watched it flutter downward, carried away by the gentle night-breeze. When Dracula turned to him, Adrian was wearing a hurt look, one of uncomprehending disappointment. 

With a heated sigh of exasperation, Dracula seized his son's arm and half-led, half-dragged him out of the room as the wind picked up, and the open window-panes began to rattle. 

***

_I was moved to another room after that, until the damage could be repaired._

_As days passed, I grew more and more accustomed to my old mode of existing, more and more able to comprehend it. I was still far from rational for some time. For example, I remember the Librarian trying to cure me by classical methods, believing the madness to be some internal fever not evident on the surface. He sat me by the fire and had me drink chilled wine, believing that the heat would force the coldness of the wine to the inside where it would cool this madness-inducing fever._

_Yes, isn't it? But recall that this was still only the fifteenth century. It was forward-thinking at that time not to attribute madness to demonic posession, although in my case that might have been closer to the truth._

_But at any rate, during these treatments he left me unattended, and I, having grown a bit less passive, had what I can best explain to you as a philosophical discussion with the fire. I couldn't speak to fires anymore, but this one was rather... ill-tempered, but witty and wise. By the time the Librarian returned, I had been burned a bit, much to his distress, but the fire and I had come to an understanding of sorts. It's something I still carry with me, but don't ask me to explain it to you. I couldn't, even if my life depended on it. But I have been able to conjure small amounts of flame ever since. Like so._

_I would not reccommend learning this by the method I used._

_Over the course of weeks, I continued to become more and more rational. I began to make sounds and eventually to speak again. I did not converse with another fireplace._

_But as I once again understood my surroundings, I grew once again to understand their horrors. And now, now I had almost seen my soul---both of them!---thrown into the fires of Hell! Now I knew that truly Castlevania and its evil were devouring me. That long-ago forsaken notion of escape returned to the foremost of my mind. I resolved that I would get out of the castle, whatever the cost, but now, I was even more confined than before. My madness and my previous attempt at suicide had made my father more watchful of me, and my movements were effectively restricted to my own room and the Library._

_So the one portal to the outside to which I had access was the window in my room. I knew that taking this escape route might well kill me, and it was a risk and a price that I accepted. It was better than being trapped in Castlevania forever. I want to stress here, however, that it was escape, not death, that was my primary intent._

_The window bars had been repaired, and I set about trying to find some way to defeat them. I tried at them all day, but to no avail. But that evening, as night fell, I knew that my father would be coming for me. I didn't want to see him even one more time. I'd done some visible damage to the window-bars, and I feared that he would see it and put a stop to my efforts. In the end, I acted out of desperation._

***

Alucard dared to come away from the window for a moment, and pushed and pulled at the wardrobe with desperate haste until he finally shoved it up against the door. Hopefully that could buy a little bit of time. Probably he wasn't going to get another chance at this, so buying time was all he could do. He ran back to the window and began prying again at the bolts holding the lattice of window-bars. He'd gotten a couple of them out, and another was loosening, but he knew it was hopeless. Even if he could get this one out, he'd counted twenty-eight more of them... 

In frustration, he laced his fingers into the bars and pulled at them, but they wouldn't even rattle. "Come out, damn you! Let me out!!" 

There was a small latching sound from the door, and then a tap, as it tried to open against the wardrobe. Alucard could feel his father standing on the other side. _No! No, let me out!_ He yanked at the window bars again. Still nothing. But he remembered seeing Dracula do it... 

He drew in his breath and braced his foot on the windowsill, then threw his weight back and dragged at the window-bars with all his strength, letting out a long roar of effort. 

His heart pounded as the sounds from the doorway changed from the rattling of the door handle to the smashing of the wood. And with every pound, he could feel the blood coming forth, infusing his body with strength. 

The iron bars began to groan and bend, and the bolts began to tear out, some with a sharp _ping!_ as they were thrown from their sockets. He could hear the scraping of the wardrobe's legs on the floor as it was shoved aside, and in that moment, in that one last heave of determination and panic, the window-grating came loose in his hands, and he fell to the floor beneath the mis-shapen lattice of metal. 

Alucard wasted no time. He rolled to his feet and looked at his father one last time, just a moment enough for the flash of recognition, then flung the twisted mass of iron at him. Dracula was unable to dodge in time and recieved the full impact of it, which knocked him back, and he spun around as half of his back hit the wall and the other half continued through the open doorway. Without a moment's hesitation, Alucard turned and flung the window open, braced his foot on the sill, and _jumped_, even in this one last motion trying to put as much distance between himself and the castle as possible. 

He hardly saw anything at first, it was all a sudden blur of motion. Somehow he turned over to face up, and the moon and stars seemed to stand still even as the castle towers tore away from him at incredible speed. Seeing Castlevania fly away into the distance, even from this vantage point, was a sight that moved his heart with joy. 

But still there was that voice of reason inside him. _I'm going to hit the ground... I'm going to die..._

_I AM NOT GOING TO DIE!_

He was past even the base of the castle now. The cliff on which it stood streaked past him, and it was then that somehow, through nothing that he knew, he put out his hands to catch himself, put them out into the empty air... 

And caught himself. His hands had become membranous wings, so wide and light that they sat on top of the air rather than falling through it. He held himself up precariously; if he stayed still too long, his tiny, stretched-out body tried to slip sideways and fall, and he flapped his new-found wings to reassert his grip. And almost immediately he learned to slip forward and fall, but it was falling gradually, falling in a controlled way, and more importantly it was taking him forward into the forest, further and further away from Castlevania. 

As he left those stone walls, his prison for ten years, behind him, he glided and flitted just above the treetops as if in a dream, and for the first time he could remember, his heart was filled with joy. 

His heart was filled with freedom. 

***

_That was the moment when I first took the shape of a bat. Even now, when I want to make the transformation, I recall that night, that fall._

_Eventually I grew tired and alighted, resuming my human shape. When morning came, I fell asleep in the shade of a tree. Although there was no pillow or blanket, I felt more comfortable and restful than I had in many years._

_Again, I don't know exactly how long I slept, but I woke at night to thrashing sounds in the trees around me. My father had sent his undead minions to retrieve me, and it was only with some difficulty that I evaded them. I pressed on through the forest, staying ahead of them as much as possible, fighting them off when need be._

_Until at last, I came to an open chasm in the ground. It was a very curious formation, because a stream emptied down into this chasm, and I think there must have been a cave at the bottom that emptied into the lake that Castlevania overlooks. The waterfall gave me pause---water is another weakness I inherited from my vampire side. But even more strange, opposite the waterfall there were stone stairs, and in general the architecture of a classical temple built into the side of the chasm._

_I think that before now this entire structure has caved in. And after my experience with it, I say so much the better.***_

***

Alucard had just decided that this chasm temple looked like an excellent place to become trapped in and decided to go around. Probably it was designed as a way to get up and down the cliff, with those stone stairs going down, but he had no use for such a thing. He felt certain that he could turn into a bat again if he had to, and simply fly down. 

He had just decided this and begun walking around the edge of the chasm when a white shape streaked up out of it. It stopped and hung in the air for a moment, and the shape resolved itself into a long, snakelike skeleton of white-bleached bone, with clawed arms and legs, and a horned skull more like that of a bull than a snake, but still having sharp teeth and fangs befitting a serpent. An undead dragon. Alucard had seen them before, stationed as guardians throughout his father's castle, but he had never seen one so large, with long, curving horns. 

The dragon-skull turned toward him, and regarded him with the unnatural perception of empty eye-sockets. 

"You know me, don't you?" Alucard called out to it as it flew toward him, moving effortlessly through the air. "I won't let you take me back!" 

Even as he said this, it circled around him, surrounding him with coils of bone, but he was not about to let himself be trapped again. He drew his sword in a wide, powerful arc, bringing the blade crashing through the serpent ribs and vertebrae. 

The dragon-skull sailed away from him, dragging its neck and arms behind it and chattering its toothy jaw angrily, lacking a voice with which to scream at him. The rest of its body, those parts of it that Alucard had severed from the head, crashed and scattered on the ground as the dead matter that they rightfully were. 

Almost immediately, it came back around for him, jaws opened wide enough to snap him in two with those razor-teeth. Alucard dodged to the side, pointing his sword into its open mouth, hoping such a blow would be as fatal to this creature as to a living one. When the skull struck his sword, it knocked the point away, but such that it now had the sword's edge across its mouth like a horse's bit. As it flew past, the sword tore off its lower jaw, and its arms as they streaked by a moment later. 

But before Alucard could prepare himself for another attack, the skull impacted against his back, thankfully not impaling him with its horns as it could have done, but knocking him off into the chasm. He landed on the upper floor of the temple structure, and the fall knocked the breath out of him for a moment. As he began to pick himself up, he raised his head to a horrible realization. The roar of the waterfall was too loud. The spray coming up from it was too great... The water level was barely below the floor where he was standing, and if it had come this high it was only rising... 

Unable to afford this pause, he scrambled to his feet just in time as the dragon-skull flew toward him again. Again he dodged aside and slashed at it, but his sword only grazed over the surface of the hard bone. Just past him it stopped and spun around, letting the curve of its horns catch him across the stomach and throw him back. He rolled with the blow and went skidding across the marble floor, then felt the edge of that floor fall away beneath him. He couldn't stop, and terror seized him in the moment before he tipped over the edge and the water closed over his head. 

The touch of the water was excruciating, like a blow with a club over every inch of his body. Desperately he righted himself, the buoyancy of his body keeping the edge of the floor still within reach. But as he dragged his head above the surface, he was just in time to see the water wash across the floor, still rising. 

And the dragon skull still danced in the air above him, turning to strike again, but not at him. As Alucard scrambled up from the water, he caught a glimpse of a spidery human figure dodging away from the skull. As it banked around to attack again, there was another figure. A man, standing directly in its path. Alucard tried to cry out a warning to him, but found no breath to shout with, and his ribs still throbbing from the water... 

At just that moment, the man's arm shot out with the snaking line and characteristic _**CRACK**_ of a whip. _A whip? Against that thing??_ But the moment the whip connected, the dragon skull shattered, and all that was left of the skeleton flew apart in pieces. 

Alucard stumbled; the water had reached his knees, and his feet were crippled with pain, sending him crashing to the floor. He caught himself on his hands and managed a wordless cry of pain and distress as the water battered at more of his body. The man with the whip turned toward the sound of his voice and ran toward him, as quickly as he could with the water dragging at his legs. 

"Trevor!" came a cry from above them. 

"I'm not leaving him!" the man shouted, leaning down. For a moment their faces were close to each other, and Alucard could see his brown eyes and coarse brown hair before the man seized him and hoisted him across his shoulders, as a shepherd might carry a lamb. The last thing he felt as he lost consciousness was the jostling of the stone stairs. 

***

_And that is how I met Trevor Belmont._

_Continued in Part 4_

Footnotes:

*Okay, so that comes from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which is anachronisic as all heck. So sue me. 

**Interesting fact: "Tepes" is pronounced "Tseh-pesh." I learned that in the course of writing this story and thought I'd pass it along. 

***This part is based on what I remember from my childhood about the circumstances in which Alucard is encountered in Castlevania III. I think, the Temple of Sarnath, with the boss enemy Bone Dragon King. Admittedly, it was a long time ago, and I lack the skill to actually play through it myself. As I understand it, the temple is a very difficult stage, for obvious reasons. 


	4. Part the Fourth

En Medias

by Half-Esper Laura  
Based on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (and a little bit on Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse) by Konami

Part 4 of 6

***

Alucard gradually woke, gradually became aware of his surroundings and situation. The first thing he percieved was the smell of food, of meat cooking over a fire. Interesting that he noticed this before the tree bark against his back, or even the cords binding his wrists on the opposite side of the tree trunk. 

He looked up to find three people seated around a campfire about ten feet away; one was the same man who had destroyed the dragon skull with a whip and rescued him, and he was wearing a tunic of earthtone colors, with a headband holding back his shoulder-length brown hair. The second was limber and wiry, dressed in a hodgepodge of colorful but tattered clothes, and the third figure was almost completely obscured in a pale blue cloak. Some small animal was cooking over the fire, reminding him that he hadn't eaten since his escape from the castle, and then not very well. 

His rescuer noticed him moving, and rose and came over to him and squatted to put them at eye-level to each other. He had an open, honest way of moving, and the smell of a laborer. The impression he gave was altogether wholesome and common. It had been years since Alucard had encountered such a person, and he liked this man immediately. 

"Sorry about the tying you up thing," the man said. "Grant insisted. So who are you?" 

"I'm... I'm Adrian. You?" 

"Trevor. Trevor Belmont. So now that I know your name, who are you?" 

"Don't underestimate the importance of knowing someone's name," Alucard said; he was still a bit groggy, and his mind was wandering. "It connects you to a person and gives you a certain power over them if you know their real name." 

The cloaked figure looked up at those words, and rose and came toward them. 

"Belmont..." Alucard mused further. "The Belmonts are a family of vampire hunters, isn't that right? And you so close to Dracula's castle..." 

"Someone has to stop him," Trevor said. 

"Yes, yes that's true..." It seemed almost ridiculous, that he would escape from Castlevania just in time to meet a great vampire hunter. Despite, or perhaps even because of, the gravity of his situation, he started to laugh. 

"What's so funny?" Trevor asked. 

"Oh, it's just... It's just funny that I would meet you. You see... I usually don't go by my real name. Usually I call myself 'Alucard'." He paused; Trevor was looking at him blankly. "Dracula spelled backward. The vampire, Count Dracula, is my father." 

"I told you he was a bloodsucker!" the wiry man shouted, as he still sat by the fire. 

"Then you're..." 

"Not exactly a vampire, no... I'm half human. I understand if half vampire is too much, though. God knows it is..." He laughed again, just a little. 

"What are you talking about?" Trevor asked. 

"You should probably kill me. ---It's all right, I should've expected it really... If you'll just untie my hands first." 

"Not for all the jewels in India!" the wiry fellow insisted, coming over to them. "You gotta watch them vampires, they're tricky." 

"I won't---" Alucard began, then stopped. "All right, then you must make the sign of the cross on me." 

"What?" Trevor said, then turned to his fellows. "He's not a vampire!" 

"He's trying to trick you! He knows you'll think he's innocent if he can take the Holy Sign." 

"I'm already wearing a cross!" Alucard protested, but then he realized that the weight of the necklace chain was absent from his neck. "Where is it!?" he cried. Could it have fallen off in the forest? Could it have stayed as it was when he became a bat, and been lost? He moaned with despair. "Joan's necklace!" 

Trevor paused for only a moment. "GRANT!" he shouted, and leapt at his wiry companion. After a bit of a chase, he managed to tackle him and wrestle him down. "Drop it!" 

"Lemme go!" 

"After you drop it!" 

"I'm not holding it!" 

"Then give it back!" 

But Alucard was unable to enjoy their antics. The cloaked figure, who had thus far remained totally silent, now knelt in front of him. He produced a needle-sharp wooden stake from the cloak, and with slender, graceful hands set the point of it against Alucard's chest. 

_No! I didn't come this far just to die! I'm not just going to let myself be killed! No! Be quiet! Just be quiet!_ He squeezed his eyes shut, focussing entirely on holding himself back. _Just be quiet, just wait..._

The point of the stake was lifted away, and a moment later, he felt the ropes around his wrists go slack. Hesitantly, he withdrew his hands from them and stood. 

"Let my hands free and I'll get it!" 

"Where is it!?" Trevor was shouting, still holding Grant down. 

"It's in the bag on my belt." 

Trevor searched through the bag and soon found the intricate silver cross. He held it up for Alucard to see. "Is this it?" 

"Yes, that's it." 

Trevor released Grant and brought the necklace, seemingly unperturbed at finding the captive freed. Alucard took the cross gratefully and fastened it again around his neck. 

"You decided he was safe?" Trevor asked the cloaked figure, who nodded. "This is our friend Sypha Belmades. He's quite a magician. I used to be pretty spooky about that kind of thing, but he seems all right." 

"One who fights against a monster like Dracula takes what advantages he can," Sypha said. His voice was low and soft, hardly more than a whisper. He turned to Alucard. "I think you know what I mean by that." 

"Hey, that's right!" Trevor said. "If you're Dracula's son, then you've been in the castle before, haven't you? I mean, you know your way around." 

"Yes... But I'm not going back there!" 

"Come on, we could really use your help." 

"You don't understand!" Alucard insisted. "I've been living there, I've been trapped there for ten years! Ten years in that evil castle, can you imagine it?? I almost died! I almost went mad! I barely got out, even now! If I go back there I might never see the sun again!" 

"Well, I'd rather he didn't come!" Grant volunteered. "Be just great to have a bloodsucker around, to bite us all on the neck when we're asleep. And a coward, at that." 

Unexpectedly, Alucard couldn't keep himself from protesting. He'd thought so himself, but... "How dare you say that!? How dare you say that when you've never even seen the inside of that place, have you? I lived ten years surrounded by walking fear and death! Ten years with walking corpses for company! You do that, and come out alive and not a demon yourself, or a madman, and we'll see if you'd ever go back! Then you can call me a coward, but now, sir, you cannot!" 

"Hey, calm down!" Trevor gently grasped Alucard's shoulders. "I understand what you're saying. Really, I can't imagine what it must've been like, but I can understand how you wouldn't want to go back. We're not going to twist your arm and make you, all right? I just thought, no harm in asking, okay?" 

Alucard grew calmer. He felt a bit guilty about his outburst now, and nodded to Trevor. "Yes. Yes, I understand. Believe me, I want to help you. I want to see my... to see Dracula stopped, but I can't do it. I tried. Believe me, I tried... And I can't..." 

"It's all right, I won't ask again," Trevor said. "So why don't we just have a meal together and go our separate ways then?" 

"Yes. Thank you very very much." Alucard was very relieved, both that it was no longer being suggested that he go back to Castlevania, and that he wouldn't have to be so humbled as to ask for food. 

***

_So I ate with them, and Trevor and Sypha asked me if I could draw maps for them, or give them anything that might help them in my absence. I was only too happy to comply with this, and sketched out a map of the castle as best I could. Grant, of course, complained the whole time that I was going to draw a map that would lead them right into a trap, but I knew that I wasn't doing so, and that was what mattered. If it was with extreme caution that they followed the path I drew out, so much the better._

_I'm getting to that._

_They didn't tarry long, wanting to reach the castle that night and go in the next morning, to face my father and his minions in daylight as much as possible. So once we finished the meal and the map, they went along their way, as best I could point it out._

_I stayed there at the campsite for some time, not knowing where I should go. I didn't want to subject human society to myself, to my demon, and living in seclusion was, while better than returning to the castle, not very appealing._

_And as I sat and pondered, I became more and more disturbed. A sort of self-hatred rose up in me. Not of the sort when I consider that I'm half vampire or half-demon mind you. Guilt. That special kind of guilt when you know that you're a coward and you're stupid. I knew how horrific Castlevania was, and yet I had sent people there unaided. In trying to preserve my soul, I had done the most soulless thing of all and abandoned them._

_I thought of Trevor. Already I felt a great deal of affection for him; I think he had that special sort of humanity that had been painfully absent during my ten years in Castlevania. I couldn't bear the thought that he might not succeed, that he might die in that castle, but I was so afraid of my father, I believed my father so powerful that I despaired of what might happen to those three. At last I couldn't abide myself if I just left them to their fate, and I followed them and joined them. To ease my greatest fears, I secured a promise from them all that if this went bad, they would kill me, rather than abandon me to live a condemned eternity in Castlevania._

_Trevor was glad to have me. Sypha's reaction was difficult to ascertain, but at least she was glad for the advantages I could provide. Grant was not pleased. But on the upside this meant I never had to stand watch when we slept---he refused to sleep without assurances that I was asleep, also. I think the others probably agreed with him, although more subtly. Of course, again, the important thing was that I knew I wasn't going to harm them. In hindsight it seems amazing that I would have been so comfortable. It had been a very long time since I had had any blood to drink, you know._

_And so, the next morning, we entered the castle, and perhaps it is ironic that the greatest dread was mine. Now I was there with a purpose, which I suppose is better than just whiling away endless days there, but for me, every inch of the castle was full of horrific memories. I knew the entry hall, where most who came to the castle died, and where he came to reanimate their corpses to serve him. I knew the chambers where the demons had parleyed, where people had died... The places where, in years before mine, my father had impaled people on great stakes and watched them die for sport, collecting their blood to drink as it trickled down from their bodies._

_But soon, it became evident that my presence in the castle now truly was different. For ten years I had lived helpless among these horrors, but now, I saw Trevor, Sypha, and Grant, putting them all to the proverbial sword, and succeeding. I was shy at first. In general the castle's monsters had never bothered me unless provoked, and the habit dies hard. But before long, I took up my sword and my conjured flames, and did as well as any of them. Except perhaps Trevor. Sypha was more... more professional, I suppose you would say, but one could see that Trevor had it in his blood. The monsters and the undead tried to defend the place, but four of us together were a match for them._

_It was during this quest that I learned to take the form of a wolf, at a moment when I was disarmed and needed a savage offense. I embarassed myself a bit, because I took awhile finding how to turn myself back. But in that form, I discovered that Sypha was a woman, by her scent. She had been pretending to be a man until that point. She was rather angry when she found that I knew, but I agreed to keep the secret._

_Ever since my lone attempt on my father's life, he had not allowed me to know where he slept, so I wasn't able to lead my companions straight to him. But I did what I could, surmised what I could from my earlier experiences. We explored everywhere. First the basements; I thought that Dracula would probably sleep in the darkest, most hidden away parts of the castle, but he wasn't there. We began exploring the halls and towers. Unfortunately we were unable to complete the mission in a single day. Perhaps Sypha had predicted this, because as we went, she placed magical wards on certain small rooms, so that the monsters would be unable to enter, and in these rooms, we would be able to sleep through the night. Although there is little sun in the castle in any case, during the day it is somewhat less horrific._

_Sypha also had quite an admirable idea. I had already warned my companions that the castle was known to change shape at times. Usually only slowly, so it was doubtful that it would shift while we were in it, but the possibility was there. So Sypha, who filled in more of the map I had drawn as we went along, placed an enchantment on that map, and connected the warded rooms to their map-depictions. As a result, this map is able to track the location of these rooms and fill in between them, and thus provide an accurate, if somewhat sketchy, map of the castle at any time. In fact, I have that map here._

_Yes, she was amazing._

_Keep it. Give it to your friend; one day his family will have a use for it again, I am sure._

_We were able to progress slowly through the castle in this way, with those "safe rooms" to fall back to when we found ourselves in trouble. As we explored the towers, it seemed we were getting closer, as the opposition became more fierce. However, I led the other three away from the Library. I suppose it's the one part of the castle that I have any fond memories of at all; all the learning there, all those long talks with the Librarian... Somehow I was protective of it. Certainly there was a limit. If we searched the rest of the castle without finding my father, I would bring them back there, but if not..._

_And however my prowess against the monsters and undead bolstered my confidence, as the unexplored portion of the castle grew less and less, my dread returned in force, because I knew that with each new room we explored, my chances of coming face-to-face with my father were greater. I hadn't forgotten my fear of him, not at all. I had not forgotten how utterly powerless I had been when he struck me or held me. Even as my confidence grew through our lesser trials and victories, a deeply-rooted dread and pessimism persisted within me. I was still all but certain that when we faced Dracula himself, this would all come to naught, and in that, it was quite likely that my allies would not even be able to honor our agreement and rescue me by my death._

_But of course, you know how this story ends. Eventually we did find him, in that precarious tower room that draws the eye, viewing the castle from the outside._

***

Even then, in the moment, Alucard couldn't say what was happening. It was all a flurry of motion---Trevor's whip, Grant's acrobatics, Sypha's flowing robes and the light-show of her spells. 

And Dracula, of course. Black-clad and larger than life, still haughty and impervious under the hail of blows. Through his own magical weavings, it seemed that he flitted from place to place without the slightest undignified exertion, attacking with flames and magic rather than dirtying his own hands. 

It was all a complex weave of action, but somehow not random, like some sort of grim death-dance in which everyone except himself knew their steps. 

But he didn't know any steps, or any words, or even the first raising of a hand. He hadn't from the moment they came into this room, and he saw Dracula there. His father had not spoken a word to him, but only looked at him, with a kind of paralyzing gaze that took all the strength out of him, that took away what shred of sense he had about what was going on. 

And so he was just standing there, back against the wall. His eyes were open; he was seeing all of it, hearing his companions occasionally shout to him before they finally gave up on him. But it was all meaningless, drowned out by the roar of his own mind. 

_Why are you standing there?! Draw your sword! Fight him! Kill him after all he's done to you! Oh, God help me... Oh, God, I'm so afraid... If I fought him I'd die... If I raised a finger against him he could kill me... Oh, God, forgive me, I'm such a coward. What am I doing leaving my friends to fight alone? How can I be such a coward as not to help them!? I'm his son, I'm responsible, I have to fight! Have to fight my father... I don't know what to do, I'm so afraid..._

_Someone help me..._

His heart skipped a beat any time he saw Trevor or Grant or Sypha take a blow, but they continued to bounce back. No mortal injuries. In a way Alucard felt that he was the one being most grievously wounded. At moments in his part of the grim dance, Dracula would deliberately meet his son's eyes, and send him reeling all over again. It was hard to read that gaze. Hurt? Betrayed? Angry? Vengeful? All of that at once? 

_I should fight. I have to fight. The fear in fighting is that one or the other of us will die, and no one can say who, but I want it that way. It has to be that way. If he doesn't die now, then I must, because it would be better than facing what came next..._ And still he couldn't move from where he stood. 

It was not until Dracula reached out for Trevor and seized his arm with a bellow of rage that Alucard realized that the attacks had been getting through bit by bit all along, but even as hope sparked, the tides turned against it as the ashen-pale hand on Trevor's arm began to grow and change. Dracula's entire body shifted and remolded itself in ways whose nebulous darkness made Alucard's wolf and bat transformations seem like tiny pale shadows, reshaping itself in moments into a huge and monstrous form, like a bat-winged demon or a hideous gargoyle. But the true terror of it was not in its aspect, but in that now huge clawed hand that hoisted Trevor Belmont up from the floor, holding him by his whip-arm to keep him from countering the attack... 

_No!_ Perhaps Alucard flattered himself to think it, but Trevor was a friend. The only one in a long long time, the only one ever to know the truth of what he was and not turn him away. Not only a friend, but practically the symbol of humanity, and everything he had longed for in ten long years of darkness... The wall came away from his back as he began to move forward. 

Sypha was quicker. She gave a full-voiced shout, no longer hiding the feminine timbre of her voice in low, hushed tones. A great crystal mass of ice flowered around the gargoyle-hand, and the Dracula-monster let out another roar of vexation as the ice snapped and Trevor fell from its grip. Immediately, it raised the other hand, black talons pointed, and Trevor, still encumbered by the ice, with no rescue and no way to dodge... 

The roar of Alucard's thoughts had frozen. He didn't consider as he darted across the room. He didn't draw his sword, didn't attack, but threw himself into the open space between Trevor and Dracula, and stood there, arms wide to accept whatever deathblow might be coming. 

"STOP!" The words poured out of him, straight from idea to speech without question. "Are you going to kill me, too? Your own child??" 

The eyes of the creature were still Dracula's eyes, and for a moment they widened as he froze, considering, torn. But then the eyes squeezed down to slits, glowing red. "YOU LITTLE TRAITOR!!!" 

The next thing Alucard knew, he was flying through the air, and pain exploded through him as he impacted against a wall and fell to the floor. It was only as that wave of pain dulled that he realized his side was burning. His head swimming, he grasped at it as if groping about in the dark. His flank had been slashed open by the claws, and seared with fresh pain as he touched the open wound. With tremendous struggle through the thick haze of his consciousness, he managed to percieve the blood glistening on his glove before collapsing into oblivion. 

***

_So you see, I didn't have so much of a hand in that. Trevor told me I saved him, that I bought them that moment that made all the difference, but I hardly did anything. I was a coward in that battle._

_I don't remember very well what came next, but I'm told that after Dracula was killed, Trevor roused me. The castle was falling in, as it does when its master dies, and he wanted to know if I could get to my feet and escape. I'm told my reply was that he should leave me and let my entire cursed bloodline end then and there, and it does sound like something I would say. But he wouldn't have any of that, and he swears that when he told me so I smiled._

_They must have carried me out of the castle, but it was some time before I returned to my senses. I had been badly injured, and the wound festered such that I'm sure those claws were poisonous. And moreover, I think that, much as I hate it, Castlevania is a part of who I am, and it had been torn away from this world. I did not mourn it for an instant, but it did place me in a sort of shock._

_I drifted between life and death for one week. I recall snatches of wakefulness. Enough to be fed, enough to be sick. I think I even spoke, but I can only imagine what sort of delirious gibberish it was._

***

"I won't stop trying until the very end," Sypha said. The male charade was over now, and she stood beside Alucard's bed with her cloak off, dressed in her plain coarse dress and with her long blonde hair unbound. "But it doesn't look good." 

What she was saying was obvious enough. Alucard's skin, normally milky-pale, had turned a deathly yellowish grey---even his lips, the one feature that was normally rosy. Occasionally he tried to toss and turn deliriously, but was so weak that he seemed trapped by the blankets. 

"I never thought it would be like this," Trevor said, sitting on a stool by the bed, holding Alucard's cold hand. "I guess I should've, but I thought when we won everything would be all right. But in real life..." 

"Grant ran off with all the money he could lay hands on..." 

"Well, that didn't surprise me. And I don't really care. That's what he wants, he can have it. But I just..." He reached over and brushed Alucard's coal-black hair with his fingers; the roots of it were noticeably white. "Have you noticed his hair?" 

"Yes," Sypha said. "For it to turn white all at once like that is---" 

"Happens if someone is scared within an inch of their life, right? I can't help but wonder what he's been through... But anyway, I was saying it really shouldn't take me by surprise, but I hadn't thought about... when it was all over... about maybe burying someone." 

"Don't give up," Sypha said. "You don't have to be falsely optimistic, but keep up hope. Keep trying 'til the very last. I think we owe him that much." 

Trevor nodded in agreement. 

"We need to draw more water..." she said, after a long pause. 

"I'll get it." Trevor started to rise, but Alucard clung to his hand and turned toward him fitfully. 

_"Don't go..."_

Trevor knelt over him, cradling a hand around his head. "What is it? Is something wrong?" 

_"Please help me."_

"I'm doing everything I can. I'm sorry." 

_"Stay with me. Please stay with me. Trevor, please. I love you."_ As he spoke, Alucard opened his eyes, looking up at Trevor with a dim, sparkling gaze. 

"Huh?" 

_"You're so warm and human and everything I'll never be. Everything I could never have. Please, I know I haven't done anything. I know it must sound horrible and disgusting to you but please. I want you to say that I was a friend to you."_

"Of course you are! And you will be for a good long time!" Trevor insisted. "You're going to be just fine. And then I'll take you home with me, and you can meet my wife, and I'll show you all my sheep. You can come out to watch them with me sometime and we can just talk all day out there, under a tree in the shade. It'll be great. I wouldn't think it was disgusting at all. Don't say that." 

_"I'm not human. I'm so ashamed, every moment I live..."_

"Yes you are human. Hush, just rest, all right? You should be proud, and if anybody asks me about you, I'm proud. Just think about that. Just let your mind rest on that, okay?" He stroked Alucard's head again as he drifted off into feverish sleep. 

"You stay with him," Sypha said in a low voice. "I'll go." 

***

_I hardly remember being awake, but it was enough that only in the silence of night did I sleep deeply enough to dream. The wound and the poison were so potent that even in my dreams I lay in bed, drained of strength._

_I dreamt of my father. I've come to believe that he is never truly gone, so I suppose that when he vanished from this world he existed in the dream world, perhaps. But I dreamt that he came to me and sat beside me on my sick-bed, and it was really very characteristic of him. While I was weak and passive thus, he stroked my head and told me that he loved me. But while he did this, I dreamt that he reached his hand into the wound in my side and... searched around inside me and removed objects. It wasn't painful, but it was uncomfortable---and draining; I was very aware of some intangible loss each time he did this. He took things from me. He took my bat-shape. He took rubies out of me, and I understood that by this he was taking my blood to strengthen himself. He took familiar things, books I had read, articles of clothing I had owned, and then things also that made no sense at all, candles, sticks and stones. I remember once he pulled out several yards of fine fabric. Then strangely, when the castle materialized again in this day and time, there those things were, and I was able to get them back. Even today the line between waking and dreaming can blur in this life I live._

_I dreamt of my father in this way for four nights. By that time I was very far gone, hardly able to lift a finger. Somehow, I don't think that he intended me to die, but the fact remains that slowly, almost gently, he was killing me in those dreams. Taking my life away little by little. Sypha and Trevor were doing what they could to save me---I never saw Grant again after the battle---but I think they had abandoned most hope by that time._

_That night, the fifth night, I dreamed of my mother. She sat beside me as my father had, and cared for me, but of course she was sincere. I dared to think I had died and gone to heaven to see her again. But after some time she told me there was something she must do, and that it would be very painful, but to recall, as she said when I was a child, that sometimes the things that are needed for healing are very painful. And she reached into the wound, as my father had done, and drew something out, but it felt completely different. Not that vague discomfort, but the pain of it was excruciating, as having something pulled out of an open wound should rightly be---Sypha told me later that I screamed even in my weakness and my sleep. But when mother had it out, it was a suit of armor which she gently dressed me in, then left me to rest. In my dream later that night, my father came again and touched me and gave me all those hateful pantomimes of affection, but he was unable to reach into the wound because of the armor._

_The sixth and seventh nights were like that as well. On the sixth night my mother came to me and comforted me, and then, honest again about how painful it would be, unlaced the armor and drew out a shield, and when Dracula came in my dream, I was able to put the shield over my face and shield myself from his touch. And on the seventh night, my mother drew out a sword and gave it to me, and with it I was able to fend the dream-Dracula off entirely, for I had been gaining strength._

_It was on the morning after this seventh night that I awoke, and from there I recovered swiftly._

_And from then on I wore that sword and shield and armor in my dreams. Imagine my shock when, after centuries of sleep, I awoke to find myself actually posessing them! Well, I shouldn't say shock. In fact I had been dreaming, wearing them in my dreams for so long that it only seemed normal. I lost them when I entered the castle, and it was not until I found them again that I realized I shouldn't have them at all. But then, I'd found so many of those dream-objects..._

_But I digress._

_After those seven nights of dreaming, I woke, and after that I swiftly recovered. Trevor and Sypha said that my survival was nothing short of miraculous, and when I related my dreams to them, Sypha understood how significant they were. Trevor was always just a bit simple about such things, however, God bless his soul. But even he said that my mother's spirit was still watching over me._

_After this Sypha went her own way, with promises to meet again. I did see her once or twice more before I went to sleep. She and I were close friends, but it was a friendship of mutual respect more than affection._

_I had nowhere to go, and so Trevor took me home with him, and introduced me to his wife. I don't remember very much about her, since I did not speak her language, but she was a good, honest woman. And I found that Trevor was a shepherd. I would go out with him to watch the sheep and sit in the shade of a tree, and we talked, and I told him everything. Everything I've told you and more. He was the best friend I have ever had, and I would be lying if I said I didn't miss him. I do, so much that I think even to refrain from saying that I miss him would be a lie of sorts..._

_After a month or so, my white hair had grown out to the point of looking positively ridiculous, the black with white roots, that is. So I had most of it cut off at some point. That wasn't terribly fetching, either, no. Even when it had returned to its previous length, still fairly short, it didn't look right, so I let it go. I don't believe I've actually cut it since. This is a way of telling you how the time passed. My hair already fell to my shoulders when I saw my old friends again._

_I told Trevor often and in detail about my days at Oxford, and it was he who suggested that I visit there again. I don't blame him for what happened, however. Suffice to say it turned out very badly._

_But I see what he intended. At first it was all of that. Some of my old friends were still in the area. Richard had sadly passed on from some infection---God rest his soul---and Robert had returned to his native Scotland to teach, but William had stayed at Oxford and become a professor. Seeing him again was among the happiest moments of my life._

***

Adrian sat in the lecture hall as the students filed out. He watched several of them come up to talk to his old friend William about the lecture. It shouldn't be so hard, he thought, just to walk up to him and introduce himself, maybe suggest going somewhere to eat, but he stayed in his seat. Partly he was afraid. William had been there when he was declared a vampire. But also he was aware of some selfish, perverse part of himself that wanted to be noticed without having to say anything. In the end, he sat there and watched, truly patient no matter what his motives were. 

At last the room stood empty and silent except for the two of them, and William gathered up his things to leave, but just when he seemed ready to walk away, he looked up at his old friend. "Can I help you, sir?" he said. 

"Yes," Adrian said, standing up. "I only wanted to see you... I don't know if you'll remember me, but we were students together here, years ago..." 

"Ah, a fellow alumnus, always a pleasure," William said. 

_He doesn't recognize me. I should probably leave it alone, better that way..._ "Actually, no, I never graduated, but we were in a rooming-house together..." 

William came closer to him, narrowing his eyes with scrutiny; suddenly, his face lit up. "Adrian!? Is it you?" 

He nodded. 

William reached him in two strides and threw his arms around him in an enthusiastic embrace. "Adrian! Well, I'll be... We all thought you were dead! Good God, what happened to your hair?" 

"I'd... rather not talk about that..." 

"Oh, no matter. Must've been rough on you, by the look of things... But no, I won't talk of that." William gave him a playful jab with a finger. "I'm going to take you to the old pub in town and we can talk about old times, tell you where everyone's gotten to." 

"Yes, I'd like that very much." Adrian could feel the gulf between them, a void-space of experience unshared. Already William was starting to shore it up, but it would never be completely done. Those ten years of Adrian's life could never be shared. That gulf of secrecy would always remain. 

***

_We went out for drinks---what's so funny about that? Well, I did then, I'm not lying about it. But no, not so much now. Not once since then, in fact. But that still seems very recent to me..._

_But he told me what had become of my old friends, what had happened to Richard and Robert. He wanted me to stay until he could send for Robert to come see me._

_And Joan, dear sweet Joan. She had been heartbroken when she recieved my last letter---you remember I told her I must never see her again. William and the others looked at it, and in their estimation I had written in the tone of one not long for this world, which I suppose I had. Upon hearing them say this, Joan eventually came to believe that I had met some horrible and terrifying demise, and at that she could come to terms with me breaking things off with her so abruptly. She grieved for me for some time, but at least she was certain that I had loved her to the end and had been so harsh still with thoughts and good wishes for her in my heart. And when I think about it, she wasn't all that far from the truth. The only flaw in the story is that I didn't die._

_But she couldn't weep over me forever, nor would I wish her to. Years passed, and in time, she took other suitors. When I returned to Oxford, she had been married for several years. ---It was quite amusing, William said that when she finally chose a favorite suitor, he and Robert took the man down to our old pub, and sat him down and talked with him and questioned and poked and prodded him. At last they told him that they were friends of Joan and of her previous, tragically deceased fiancée---that being myself---and that in my abscence they were acting as my advocates, making certain that Joan didn't settle for some unworthy slob. He'd passed the test, they said, but they warned him to be good to her. The story goes that Robert told him "I'd treat her nicely if I were you, with how our Adrian passed on. Ugly stuff. He was a good friend through it all but"---here he leaned close and whispered---"He was a vampire." Ha ha!_

_I'm sorry, it really isn't funny at all. No, believe me, it isn't._

_I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit... Well, yes, a bit jealous, but I was thinking more of--- Yes. Broken hearted, but in my head I knew that this was all for the best. After all, though William didn't know it, the horror I went through that made me send that letter would never be fully gone from me. I could never marry her, so better that she should be happy with someone else. He wasn't a wealthy man. He was a carpenter, I think, with just a simple house, but it seemed to me that she was happy. In my mind, I knew that was how it should be._

_But no, I didn't feel that way. I ask myself over and over if that's the true reason why it happened the way it did... And maybe it is. I should have known better from the start. I should have gone with my head and thought it would only cause trouble... But I had to see Joan again. Surely you can understand that._

***

"Joan, who is this?" the man asked. 

"Oh, this is Adrian!" Joan said excitedly, getting up from her seat beside him. "You remember, the man I was engaged to when I was younger." 

A slight pause while the obstacle of tact was navigated. "Well, why's he here?" 

"Sir, I don't mean any imposition," Adrian offered. "But I've been gone for many years, and I want to see old friends." 

"Oh, Jack, surely you trust me," Joan cooed. 

"Well, all right," he conceded. "But we don't have any extra beds." 

"I won't be staying that long," Adrian said. 

Jack nodded and left, presumably going back to his work. 

Joan heaved a sigh of relief and sat back down beside Adrian. "Ah! That's my Jack. He's a dear, but I knew he wouldn't be too happy about you being here, since..." 

"I have no intention of taking you away from your husband," Adrian said. "I'm glad you've found someone you can be happy with." 

"What about you? Any of the girls back home catch your eye?" 

"No," Adrian said. "No, in fact I've decided never to marry at all." 

Joan gave him a concerned look. 

"It's not your fault," he said. "It's just because of... my circumstances..." 

"Yes, I can imagine. From that letter and..." she glanced at his white hair. "You must have been through something terrible." 

"I can't even begin to tell you about it," Adrian said. "But I'm so glad to see you again. You're so... So beautiful and steady... Just, human virtue. After all the insanity I've been through..." 

Joan edged closer to him and spoke more softly. "Sweetheart, tell me what happened." 

"I mustn't do that. It would..." 

"Don't you think I should at least know why you broke off our engagement? I can tell it's eating you up to keep it inside. It's like a fence between us, and you're trying to figure out how to get around it. It's all right. You could always talk to me." 

Adrian nodded, slowly and nervously, then remained silent for some time. "Do you remember why I left?" 

"You were sick." 

"Do you remember why I was taken home to my father?" 

"They said that the doctors there knew more about curing vampirism." 

Again, he paused for some time. "They lied, Joan." 

"What?" 

"The messengers lied to get me away from here. There is no cure for my curse." 

"So you're..." 

With a deep breath, he set his jaw and spoke clearly. "I am as much a vampire now as I have ever been." 

Joan raised a hand to her mouth, but slowly. It was not a gesture of fear, but one of sympathy, of recognition for the pain this fact caused him. "Oh, Adrian! That's why. Like that last night we were together... You wanted to protect me." 

He nodded, as she reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder. 

Suddenly, she whipped around as the door opened with a crash. Jack stood, framed in the doorway for a moment before striding into the room, bearing down on Adrian. "Get away from my wife, monster!" 

"Sir, I---" Adrian stopped short as he realized with horror that Jack had a sharpened piece of wood in his hand. 

"Jack, no! Stop it!" Joan cried, grabbing his free arm, but he was too strong for her to hold him back. Adrian darted to the side just as the stake descended and buried itself in the back of his chair. 

"Wait!" Adrian shouted. "I won't hurt you! I won't hurt her!" He felt a solid surface against his back and turned his head to see a wooden frame around him. He had barely realized that he was in a doorway when Jack roared and leapt at him. 

Their combined weight crashed through the door, and Adrian hit the ground with Jack on top of him. It knocked the breath out of him and sent his mind spinning in the confusion of violence. Words fought their way toward speech: _I don't want to hurt you, but I won't let you kill me! Let me go! I WON"T LET YOU KILL ME!_ He never knew which of them were said and which were choked back by the pain that shot through him as the stake descended on him, over and over... 

In the chaos, only one thing was still discernible, the pounding of his own heart as the blows rained down around it, sending that familiar strength surging through his body. Not only the strength, but will and rage. _You're not going to kill me! Death didn't kill me, my father didn't kill me, and I SWEAR TO GOD YOU WILL NOT KILL ME!!!_ The thoughts blew through him, like gusts in the sails of a ship, not needing to be said, only lending their force. With a cry of pain and rage, Adrian seized that murderous hand, flung away the weight that pressed him down, wrestled it into submission. He was no longer aware of Jack, or the stake, or the heavenly-sweet taste of blood, only that it made the violence and danger go away, only that the more he drank from that fountain of strength, the more it made the pain go away... 

It was Joan's screaming that brought him back to his senses. He looked up and saw the kitchen around him, saw her standing in the smashed-in doorway, staring at him wildly and screaming, and only then did he feel the warm liquid trickling down his chin and realize what it was. He turned and saw Jack laying lifeless on the floor, his hand wrapped loosely around the bloody wooden stake, his arm twisted into a sickening, broken shape. Adrian reached for the pulse-point in the graey-white flesh of his throat, only to find a bloody mark of teeth. With a glance at his blindly-staring eyes, there was no longer any need to confirm that the man was dead. 

Desperately, Adrian turned. Joan had sunk to her knees, sobbing. "Joan," he started, full of remorse, but she recoiled from him, screaming with grief and fear. 

He couldn't bear it any longer. The need to escape flooded his mind, and without thinking---for he was unable to think---he ran past Joan, just brushing her with silver wolf-fur that slipped easily between her body and the doorjamb. In long, surreally slow leaps of padded feet, he bounded out the door of the house and away into the woods. 

_Continued in Part 5_


	5. Part the Fifth

En Medias

by Half-Esper Laura  
Based on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (and a little bit on Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse) by Konami

Part 5 of 6

_I killed him. I drank him dry and killed him. Maybe I was just defending myself. Maybe I only lost my head because of my injuries but... I just know that somewhere inside I wanted to kill him for marrying Joan. Somewhere deep inside me I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the taste of his blood... I never knew what happened to Joan. Of course she was a widow... And people have gone mad over less. I like to think that William would take care of her, but... Oh, God, I ruined her. The only person I ever loved, ever kissed, and I destroyed her..._

_This is what I'm trying to tell you. I don't intend any of it, but somehow I corrupt and destroy everything I touch. Just as my father destroyed the one he loved, I suppose... When I speak of the curse of my blood, this is what I mean._

_But I never saw her again. I never saw any of them again. Not Joan or William or Robert, or Sypha either. I went back to Trevor like a prodigal son, and I trembled and I fell down and wept in front of him. He picked me up, and his wife made me something to eat, because I hadn't had anything since that meal of blood, but I couldn't eat. What was I to eat, after devouring a man's very life?_

_I suppose that's why Trevor agreed to it, when I decided to come back here to sleep. Whether he agreed with my wish not to be a danger to others, or merely appreciated my misery and knew that I would be happier in my dreams. I came back here because as I've said, Castlevania is a part of me, however damnable a fact that is. And I may as well give in to it because it kills every other part of me. Joan was the last piece of my life that wasn't tied up with this God-forsaken place, and she was gone. I had nightmares about who or what would be next, especially as I clung to Trevor as my last hope and comfort._

_So I came back here. Trevor brought me. I don't think he wanted to let me go alone in the state I was in. We came and I found a place near to the cliff where the castle stands, when it stands. He bought me a casket, and filled it with earth, and when it was all ready I hugged him like a brother and wept on his shoulder and said goodbye to him, and then I lay down to sleep in that soil, let its nebulous blackness swallow me up into the world of dreams..._

_I could not have said how long I slept, but with what I have learned since, I can deduce that it was well over three hundred years. It would seem that I should know how long it was, because I was dreaming the entire time, that I would know by the bulk of those experiences, but dreams are so surreal in that way. I could think I had been on some dream-adventure for years, when in reality it had just begun and I had only decided that I had been there for years. As someone who has spent so much time dreaming, I can tell you that's the key to them. Things in the dream world are what you decide that they are. But don't take this to mean that you can control them. No, sometimes what you know to be true, even in a dream, can seem entirely out of your control..._

_For example, I've never dreamed of Mother, except in moments when I was very near to death myself. Perhaps I should say never successfully. Everytime I dream of her, I dream of her death, and even now, fully grown, with the armor and sword she gave me, I can never save her... Oh, God, I don't know how many times I've been through it... So I have to console myself that I'll see her again when I die. I have to think so, at any rate, or else I don't know why I'd go on..._

_I can hardly even remember all those years now. Centuries of memories, of grief and recovery, horrors and comforts, domestic routines and grand adventures, all like wisps of smoke. You see them, but indistinctly, and when you try to grasp them to understand their shape, they melt away, only to wind their haze back upward a moment later._

_But other than the nightmares, I was happy there. I saw old places and old friends. The village from my childhood, Oxford in the days before I'd lived in Castlevania. Things long gone. Those bits of "normal human life" that I cling to so dearly. When I go back to sleep, I'll dream of Trevor and Sypha again, of Joan before I ruined her life... I'm an orphan in this age. Or perhaps more like an old widower. Drifting through the lives of those who have inherited the earth and who have nothing to do with me. The only thing that connected me to this time was Castlevania._

_When I woke and saw it, I knew that was the reason I had awakened. I knew what I had to do. And in that place, nothing had changed in all that time._

_Yes, that is how I met you._

***

The ticking of the clock echoed through the room like a heartbeat for the sprawling stone beast that was Castlevania. Alucard didn't even bother to read it. What did time matter? He would fight as long as he could, sleep when he was too weary to go on, and go back to his eternal sleep when it was all over. Assuming that he was still alive when it was all over. No one would be there to help him face his father this time... 

He pushed that thought aside as he noticed another figure in the room; a blonde girl in a short green dress... His intuitions told him that she was human, not an enemy. Perhaps in need of rescue? No. She carried herself with confidence. To have gotten this deep into the castle she must be able to fend for herself. She was looking back at him, no doubt sizing him up as well, and with a short acknowledging nod he crossed slowly toward the opposite door. 

"Wait!" 

He stopped and turned as she walked up to him. "...Well, you seem human..." she said. "But... What are you doing here?" 

He paused a moment before answering. "I've come to destroy this castle." 

"Then we seem to be on the same side at least," she said. "I guess I'll trust you. I'm Maria," she offered a hand. "And you are...?" 

"...Alucard," he replied, making no move for her hand. Her easy manner was somehow too annoying to use his real name. 

"Not quite the sociable type, I see," Maria said with an amused smile. She looked him in the eyes as if wanting to say more, but both were silent for a long moment, the stillness broken only by the expectant look in her open, blue eyes. Alucard could feel himself bristle at this, although he wasn't sure why. 

"Well, I suppose we'll see each other again," she said, apparently taking the hint. "Assuming we're both still alive, anyway. Good luck!" With that, she disappeared down the corridor. 

Alucard knew already that he was alone now. Obviously, ages had passed since he fell asleep. All this old friends would be dead... The loneliness was oppressive. And yet, somehow, being confronted with someone who wanted to involve herself with him... It seemed almost worse than being alone. 

***

_Of course telling you the rest of the story would serve no purpose, except to bore you. You were only just there._

_No, no, nothing that you need to hear. Certainly not "ordinary," but I'm sure you can imagine how it went. Nothing worth noting._

***

The familiar resonance of Sypha's wards greeted Alucard like a breath of fresh air as he entered the small chamber and shut the door behind him. The place smelled of disuse, and its furniture lay in tatters of decay, since the ward kept the inhabitants of the castle from entering, but nothing could have made the place so aversive that Alucard would leave it; beyond recognizing the protective spell, he was hardly even aware of the room itself. With no one there to see, he fairly collapsed on the floor. Every inch of his body ached with weariness---in fighting his father's minions, he'd begun making foolish mistakes, the sort that he knew would bring death if they continued. Nothing for it but to rest... 

Even without cushions or pillows, he could have slept easily from the exhaustion. Seemingly without the effort even of willing it, a thick dark blanket of sleep closed around him, easing him out of his aching body, teaching him the truth, that that body and the stone walls and floors and monsters were not real, that the dark, swirling universe of sleep and dream were the true reality. 

He floated weightless in the warm dark for some time, still held back by this physical fatigue. Slowly, invisible as the opening of a flower, that barrier opened up, and the flow of that true dream-reality began to surround him, physical, but mutuable as water. A ground underneath him rippled into being; cobblestones surfaced in it when he looked at them, only to sink out of existence in the corners of his vision. He came to the realization of people around him---a crowd, in fact---but there was little presence to them, only the wisp of recognition. Disturbing recognition. 

_Not this dream... Not this dream again..._

They were people from his childhood, from the village where he was born. Crowding the square of the town, surrounded by ghostly dream-buildings. And in the middle of it all stood the cross, towering over with all the horror of Calvary, but it was his mother, tied to it by her wrists. 

_I've been here before. I've tried a hundred times and it never works..._ But there was no choice but to try. He ran toward her, shoving desperately through the nightmare-crowd. 

"MOTHER!!!" 

He was still running when a phantom grip caught his arm, and his forward momentum sent him crashing to the ground. Even has he fought to free himself, another pair of hands took his other arm. 

"LET ME GO!" he screamed, his voice in that moment as commanding and terrible as his father's. "MOTHER, I'LL SAVE YOU!" Something was surging through him, something even more than the fear and the anger. With every beat of his heart, the grip on his arms seemed less inescapable. Every pull against his captors came closer and closer to overpowering them, he could feel it. The strength had to be there. He wouldn't let anyone stop him. 

"Alucard, no!" Lisa called from above him. 

He stopped fighting and looked up at her. "Mother!" he cried, but this time more sedate, more pleading. 

"It's all right, Alucard" she said, her voice as soft and comforting as it had been in a thousand evenings at home. "I'm so glad I can see you again before I die." 

"You're not going to die!" 

"If this is the price I have to pay to save other people's lives, I will give it gladly. I'm only so sorry that I can't be with you and see you grow up." 

His legs gave out underneath him, and the men let him fall to his knees, sobbing. 

"Please, don't cry just yet. I don't want you to cry the last time you look at me," Lisa said. 

He wiped his face and looked up at her. His eyes were sparkling, but he met her gaze steadily, even as he heard the crackle of flames from somewhere nearby. 

"Alucard, these will be my last words to you, so always remember them. Will you do that for me?" 

He nodded, unable to speak. 

"You must hate humans. Never allow yourself to feel sympathy for them, for they are to be your prey." 

The entire dream-world---or was it Alucard himself?---reeled from those words. His mind was suddenly thrown into confusion. This was how it happened. It was the truth---it was real! But something had gone terribly wrong. Somehow it was all distorted; it didn't make sense... "Mother, what are you saying?" He pleaded to her for answers, as a sinner to a church crucifix. 

"You must never feel sorry for them, or you can never be happy," she said. "Look at them, they lead such miserable lives! Kill them and bring them happiness!" 

"Mother, no!" 

"For me, Alucard! Start with that one beside you!" 

The earth and sky of the dream---and Alucard's mind which it reflected---were by now so twisted, bent back on themselves, stretched and distorted to the breaking point, and himself, the crux of that tension... In another moment it would snap. His mind would snap, and he would die, or worse... Blindly, unthinking, he leapt to his feet. "NO! You're not my mother!!" 

The dream began to return to shape... _Of course...!_

"Alucard!" she cried, "how can you say that to me now!?" Someone was coming toward her with a torch, a contrived element to make him feel guilty. But he hadn't thought of it. Contrived by whom, then...? 

"My mother never said such a thing! She would never say that!! YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER!!" 

The dream ground to a halt. The tension and distortion were gone, but the world froze in a manner no less unnatural. He looked around; the spectres of people were frozen, the dream buildings had lost their ethereal shimmer and stood still and cold. 

When he turned back to the cross, the figure of Lisa was gone, but it wasn't empty. A woman clung to it, hanging on the crossbar by her knees. She was not restrained at all, but lounging, playful, as if she had climbed it for sport. She anchored a hand and swung around toward him, and he saw that she was completely nude, except for a narrow black belt wrapped several times around her midsection. Horns sprouted from under her slick, dark hair, and a tail and batlike wings flicked out behind her. "You broke my spell," she said, with a lascivious smile. "I love it when mortal men act so strong." 

Alucard grimaced with disgust. A Succubus, the most base of demons... Impersonating his mother, that angel on earth! He drew his sword. "Get away from me, Demon!" She only watched him with a mocking, bemused smile. "Get away from me, or I swear I'll kill you! It's less than you deserve for mocking my mother!" 

The demon jumped down lightly from the cross, spreading her small, toy-like wings. "So, I've gotten you all excited! This should be fun!" 

Alucard waited for her to move, eyes and muscles trained, tense with anticipation, but instead of coming toward him, she dodged into the frozen crowd. For a moment he followed her, but then she was only a movement of shadow, and another appeared somewhere else, but when he turned to see it, it disappeared again. Standing still he was only a target; he chased the flickers of shadow, only to see them resolve into shadows of the statue-crowd before he reached them. She led him on a teasing chase, weaving through the crowd, always just out of reach. He slashed at the figures that seemed to hide her, but the sword only passed through them like ghosts. "If it's a fight you want, come out and fight me!" he shouted. 

"Whatever do you mean, darling? I'm right here," came her voice from behind and above him. He whipped around to see her standing on a man's head, just far enough away to be safe from attack. "I must say I expected better. You have the scent of a vampire, and yet you aren't... You're getting winded already!" 

It was true that even in his dream he was breathing heavily, but she was mistaken. It was the rage that caused it, not the exertion. 

"But I'm tired of playing hide-and-seek, too. It's time we got a bit closer, yes?" she said, crouching. 

"Stay away from me!" he shouted again, backing away. He saw her flick her wings, and then a ripple from them seemed to travel through the shadows of the crowd toward him, behind him... He was just beginning to turn when a cascade of thin black shapes exploded around him, seizing his arms, wrenching his wrist until he dropped his sword, snatching him up off the ground, leaving stabbing pains wherever they went. When the motion stopped, he saw them as black, thorned vines that extended from the ribs in her wings. He strained against them, reaching for his sword, knowing he couldn't win without it... But they held him fast; there was no escape... 

_Wait! This is all wrong!_ He remembered, it was a nightmare! The more he fought the thorns, the more he acknowledged them, the more he made them real. Pulling against them only made them hold fast. _I have to relax. I have to believe---have to **know** that this isn't happening..._

But that was impossible to do without defeating self-consciousness, especially when the Succubus seated herself on his chest, wrapped her legs around him... Fear washed over him, of a fate even worse than death. _No! How can I stop her? I can't stop her! No! Must relax..._

She bent low over his face as he lay still in her grasp. The thorn-vines brushed at his cheek, a half-painful, tickling caress. Almost gently, one of them wrapped around his throat and began to squeeze. "Come now, darling," she breathed softly, barely touching her face to his lips as they came open, searching for unhindered breath. "It's no fun if you don't fight just a little." 

It was more than he could stand. It had become cruel to the point of being absurd, unbelieveable. He would have been lost if in that moment he had thought, "this is my chance," but he knew it, deep inside without thinking, and he took it. This couldn't be happening... So it wasn't happening! He was having the same dream again, so many times he knew it by heart. That was the men holding him back. The fear and rage was because they were keeping him from his mother, and he had to save her, just once out of all these hundreds of times... 

Easily, he threw their grip aside, but still they stood like statues. Still the cross was empty. He turned, and the Succubus was still there, cooing over his own relaxed form, not realizing that it was an empty doll. Despite the shock and disgust at seeing his own reflection thus, he laughed inside at her error. He knew with elation that he would kill her, but he held the emotion in check long enough to aproach her quietly, enough to pick up his sword and walk right up behind her without pointing out her mistake. 

With the force of all his rage, he slashed across her back. She screamed as her little black wings were torn off, and they and the attached vines vanished like shadows, spilling her onto the ground. She arched her back, which was gushing black blood, and twisted to face him. "What? How did you do that!?" 

"I've had worse nightmares than you," he said coldly, looking down at her. 

"Wait... not quite a vampire... You're Lord Dracula's son! Please! Please, have mercy!" she cried. 

"Not for such a vile creature as you," he said. "I've read that dying in the dreamworld will trap your soul here to wander forever. You should feel lucky I'm not sending you to Hell." 

Her face hardened. She knew what was coming. "You remember that," she said. 

With one swift thrust, he drove his sword through her heart, and she melted away, leaving only the echo of her death-scream. 

But Alucard had forgotten; behind and beneath her, there was still the reflection of himself. With the Succubus gone, he found the point of his sword buried in his own belly. And he felt it. He felt nauseous; he felt the stinging where the black thorns had pierced his skin. _I escaped her... Why is this still here?_

Then he remembered, and he dropped the sword and cried out in shock. Succubi were not dream-creatures, but somewhere between dreaming and reality, like humans, like himself. Or rather the inverse: they favored dreaming, with only an occasional wisp of physical reality. But it was enough that whatever they did to their victims was real. He was looking at his body. Everything that had happened to it in this dream had actually happened to his body... 

He took himself up in his arms and shook himself, knowing he had to wake up. He was mortally wounded, but he'd been through worse. He'd survived being stabbed in the chest with a stake. Somehow he knew he could survive this, too, if only he could wake up... It made the dream world ripple and spin, shake from its foundations. The street seemed to swing around with him. His head was laying on the stones, and there were footsteps all around, close to his ears. 

_What? What's happening??_ Painfully, he lifted his shoulders and looked up. His heart sank as he recognized the people of his childhood village milling around him, shouting. He could see the cross at the head of the crowd, and just barely make out a figure tied to it. _Mother! I have to save her..._ A vague feeling of deja vu told him it wouldn't work, but he wasn't listening. A searing pain in his stomach doubled him up and kept him from standing, and he crawled desperately toward her. The people seemed not to notice him, or the trail of blood he left behind him. 

He was almost to the head of the crowd; if he looked up he could see her now... "Mother!" he called, hoarsely from the pricks and bruises around his throat. 

She looked down at him, and her eyes widened in shock. "Adrian!?" 

Two of the men in the crowd grabbed his arms to hold him back. His head spun as they wrenched him up, and the dream shook and spun again. The men dissolved, unnoticed, and he fell on his back, looking up at Lisa. He could barely move, but the street seemed to swell beneath him. "Mother, I'll save you!" he called. With Herculean effort, he lifted a hand toward her. The cross wasn't so far away; it seemed to lean over him, and it was burning now, surrounding her with a corona of flames. 

"Adrian, no!" Lisa cried. "You have to wake up!!" 

Her fire-lit face was terrified, and it tore at him inside; he could hardly bear to see her like that. But it would all be worth it if he could just reach her... His mind was spinning, losing shape. His body was in a chaos of pain; he felt something hot rising in this throat and his mouth flooded with the blissfully sweet taste of blood. But if he could just focus on that outstretched hand... The dreamworld had begun to collapse in on him, bringing him and his mother ever closer... Just a few more inches and he could reach her; he could save her! "I can almost... reach... you...!" 

"No, don't!! Wake up! Adrian, wake up!!" she cried, with a desperation she had never had in life. 

But he wouldn't be dissuaded. Did she think this was a dream?? He reached for her, closer, closer...! 

Just as he was about to touch her, a fit of racking coughs seized him; each one flooded the world with a burst of white light, and each one brought up blood. He could feel it run down his face, but it didn't matter. If he could just reach... 

But as he looked up at his mother to reach for her, he froze. She looked down in abject horror, not at him, but at the blood. By now it was everywhere, on his face, soaking through his clothes.... Her mouth was open. 

_No! Please not that---_

Lisa screamed. 

Alucard woke on the floor of the warded chamber, trying to scream and failing, gasping for breath. The realization of his injuries hit him like a punch, and he collapsed, curled up tightly in agony. His heart was pounding, and it eased the pain away, little by little. He felt his belly with his hand, just to be sure. Yes, the wound was closing. He would survive, though now he was lightheaded, exhausted, cold from the drain on his blood. Too tired to think, he wrapped his cape around himself as best he could to keep warm and fell asleep again. 

He had the same dream again, just once more so that he could get it right. There was no Succubus this time, and the men weren't able to hold him back, but no matter how much he ran toward his mother, he was never any closer to her, never in reach of her. Finally he fell to his knees and cried like a child, and she told him never to hate humans, and to tell his father that she would always love him. She told Adrian "I will always love you." 

***

_I'd done it before and I told you about that._

_But it was harder. Before I was with Trevor and the others. This time I was alone. They are all long gone..._

***

The Roman-esque arena standing so still and empty would have provoked a strange sensation even in its usual orientation. Now, as Alucard paced its ceiling alert for any hidden enemy, the effect was positively surreal. 

Satisfied that the room was entirely empty, he walked over beneath the grand viewing box, and looked up at the throne-like seat overlooking---if that word could apply here---the arena floor. Generally he had acclimated to the upside-down Castlevania, but the sight of the high, velvet-padded back of the chair jutting down from the overhead floor still struck him as bizarre. 

From the mirror of that seat, Richter Belmont had looked down at him. That had been a surreal experience as well, to hear a Belmont commanding Dracula's minions of evil. But the scent, the presence of Belmont blood was unmistakable. It smelled of sunlight and honest labor. Most humans smelled that way a little, Maria more than most, but none like Trevor, and then Richter, still giving that feeling while the crux of such darkness and intrigue... It was terrible in a way, but strangely impressive. He could feel a leftover trace of it even now... 

"Finally! We found you!" 

As the familiar voice echoed across the vast empty room, Alucard whipped around to face it. His eyes and ears agreed, but it wasn't possible... 

Trevor Belmont turned and called toward the floor-level doorway, now raised above the ceiling on which he and Alucard stood. "He's in here!" Sure enough, a moment later Grant somersaulted down, followed by Sypha, who let herself down gently by some magic. 

Alucard stood dumbfounded as they approached him at a familiar gait. As they drew near, it roused him to his senses as if they had crossed some invisible barrier, and he drew his sword and trained it at the three of them. "Who are you!?" he demanded. Surely this was some sort of trick... 

Trevor raised his hands. "Whoa! Alucard, don't you recognize me? It's me, Trevor." 

"That's impossible. Trevor Belmont is dead." 

"Dead...? What do you mean? You just saw me---" 

"I've been asleep for hundreds of years," Alucard said, in a cold growl. "How could any of you still be alive?" 

"But you were only asleep for a week---" 

Sypha stayed him with a hand, and spoke in her low hidden-female voice. "Alucard, what do you think is happening here?" 

"I think that you're all impostors trying to deceive me." 

"No. What year is it? Why has Castlevania returned?" 

"It is the Year of Our Lord 1796.* And some poorly-intentioned soul was using your---" a flick of the sword-point toward Trevor, "---_distant descendant_ to revive my father." 

"Some sort of illusion..." Sypha muttered, as Grant spun a finger around his ear. 

"Well..." Trevor began, "it's definitely not 1796. After you went to sleep, I stayed in Transylvania for a few days, and then the castle appeared again. When I found you gone from your casket, the three of us came in here after you as soon as we could." 

"You're lying!" Alucard realized with panic how easy it was to believe their story. He couldn't let himself be drawn into a trap. But if it were true... 

"I think you're the one putting us on!" Grant argued, in typical fashion. "How do we know you weren't just waiting to inherit the place when we'd done with Dracula, hm?" 

"That's ridiculous!" 

"Not as ridiculous as your fish story. 1796. Please." 

"And Alucard," Trevor said, "Do you really think a Belmont would ever be part of reviving Dracula?" 

The point of the sword wandered off-target, and Alucard knit his brows, trying to ascertain which of the competing versions of events might have a telling flaw. "Maria... she was real..." 

"You must've been drawn into some sort of illusion," Sypha said. "The people and things you encountered here weren't real, but were only invented as a way to keep you here." 

"But I saw every detail... Even the scent...! These things were solid to the touch. I've nearly been killed here!" 

"The illusion isn't projected outside of you, it's in your mind," Sypha said. "It can read from your thoughts, produce every sensation you expected, even the pain of wounds. Thankfully it seems it was made to add things to your perception and not remove or alter them, or else you may never have even seen us, or we might have been presented to you as monsters to kill." 

"It is 1796!" Alucard insisted, painfully aware that his arguments were growing flimsier by the moment. "The Librarian showed me a map, with new continents! New literature and science..." 

"It wasn't real," Trevor said soothingly. 

"Or if it was, the Librarian here would have every reason to participate in the deception," Sypha added. 

Alucard's sword hung at his side by this time. He knew of nothing to say. Logically, he saw no way to choose. But it would be such a gift, to have them all back... Seeing his indecision, Trevor crossed to him and took him in a rough yet gentle embrace. In that moment, he was totally disarmed, and leaned on his old friend. "So, what now?" he asked wearily. 

"That depends," Sypha said. "Is Dracula here now? As his son, you must be able to feel if his presence is near." 

"He isn't here now," Alucard said. He searched through his cape and produced the bag containing the fragments he had found. "There are pieces of his remains scattered through this castle. I've been trying to find them before..." He trailed off, as his companions' stares showed something amiss. 

"Are you... holding something...?" Trevor asked. 

With a shrug of resignation, Alucard tossed the apparently-illusionary bag aside. 

"This is unfortunate..." Sypha was muttering. "This is what I was afraid of..." 

"I could've told you," Grant said, as Trevor took on a sober look. 

"What is it?" Alucard asked. 

"This castle feeds on Dracula's energy," Sypha explained. "When he lives, it stands, and when he dies it falls. If he isn't here, the only explanation I can find is that it's feeding on you." 

"That's impossible. I would never allow such a thing. I'd feel it if that were true." 

"Alucard, I don't want to insult you," Trevor said, "but what you do and don't notice doesn't seem to be very reliable right now." 

"And it gets worse," Sypha said. "Apparently the difference between Dracula and you created some kind of paradox that produced the second castle. I don't fully understand what's causing it, but it could happen again." 

"How many of these damned things are you talking about?" Grant asked. 

"Theoretically, it could become an infinite number." 

"Fine then, we have to leave this place," Alucard said. "Once I'm gone, the castles will lose their host and fall. This didn't begin until I returned here, so I'll leave this country and never return." 

"It's not that simple," Sypha said. "Castlevania is going to extraordinary measures to keep its 'host,' as you put it. The elaborate illusion proves that. If it can do such a thing as that, it won't just let you go." 

"It has never been simple at all, and this castle has never 'just let me go,'" Alucard said. "And yet, somehow, we achieved the goal before us." 

"Yeah, and that worked like a charm here, didn't it?" Grant said. "Maybe if we win this time we get a sideways castle." 

"There's only one way to destroy the castles' source," Sypha said. Even without the words, there was no question of what she meant. 

"How can you say that!?" he demanded. "How can you refuse to even try!?" 

"Alucard, I'm sorry," Trevor said. "But this is all we can do." 

Alucard half-stumbled back from them. "How can you do this to me!?" he cried. "I thought you all were dead. I thought you were hundreds of years gone. Sypha..." It was unbelievable to him that this was the same Sypha Belmades who had nursed his wounds after the battle with Dracula, now coldly condemning him to death. "Trevor, you called me your friend. You carried me out of Castlevania when it was falling down around your ears! How can you do this? How can you come back from the dead only to betray me!?" 

Trevor approached him carefully, and took him by the shoulders. "I remember that time. I remember that you were willing to die then. To die and take all this evil with you. It would have been a noble sacrifice. 

"It was _what you wanted_. And I never should have stopped you." 

Alucard pushed him away with sudden strength, and stepped back from them deliberately. It was impossible. Trevor would never have said such a thing. But what could he do? He could never forgive himself if they were telling the truth and he raised a hand against them... 

In a moment, it came to him, and he decided what to do. It was a gamble, yes, but the best option he could divine. He looked at Trevor, Sypha, and Grant with the same stone-face he had shown to Maria, and spoke to them in the same cold voice. "If you want to proceed with your plan without my consent, together you can likely succeed. But don't think it will be easy. I am sure I could take at least one of you with me." 

"Alucard---" Trevor started. 

He held up a hand to stay him. "I will go along with what you say, on one condition. Any one of you can drive the stake through my heart. But only if he says my Christian Name." 

Alucard fixed on them a stare so intense as to block from his mind any thought of the answer to his question, lest it was indeed an illusion that could read his thoughts. Grant didn't matter. Truly, he never really had. Sypha's face was unreadable in her cloak, but she was silent. Not right. She knew the power in a name. She would never have forgotten. Trevor only looked confused. He had been an illiterate shepherd, but in everything he knew, he was clever and sure. He had spoken the name many times. Beyond all doubt... 

"Alucard," Trevor said, as if it were the obvious truth. 

Immediately Adrian-Alucard bore down on him in a fury. "_Trevor Belmont would **never** regret saving me, **and he would never forget my name!!!**_" With that, he seized a handful of the false Trevor's tunic and yanked it savagely. 

Caught up in the fabric, "Trevor"s torso was literally pulled loose from him, and a skeleton head and limbs clattered to the floor in pieces a mere second before the cloth tunic gave in to centuries of decay, releasing a hail of sundry bones. Before Alucard could even turn to look, Grant and Sypha were scattered on the floor in a similar state. He jumped back in shock and horror, but after one breath, he turned his back to all of it. He knew there was still something to be done. He had to press on, had to forget this, but with no thought of where to press on to, he only wandered urgently over to a column at the edge of the room. 

He rested a hand on it to steady himself and stared down at its capital. They hadn't been real. Sypha had been just the sort of illusion she had accused Maria and Richter of being. He looked and yes, the bag of Dracula's remains was still there. It was real. And Trevor, Trevor was dead, for hundreds of years. They all were. 

_Dead for hundreds of years..._

Adrian gave a long, loud wail of grief, a chilling sound to rival all the unquiet souls of Castlevania. He clung to the column as if it were his mother as he sank to the ceiling-floor, utterly overcome. There he stayed for a very long time, and between his tears there lay helpless fear. It wasn't a warded room, he was vulnerable, and who knew what hellish beast might be roused by his cries? 

But no such thing came. In the entire vast space of the arena, there was no sound or movement except the flickering upside-down torches and his anguished voice. 

_Concluded in Part 6_

Footnotes:

*This is debatable, and not just the way they debate it in this scene. Prior to the "Bloodlines" intro, four years before the game proper, Symphony of the Night says "Travel back to... 1792." I take this to refer to the Bloodlines intro, though it may also refer to Alucard's quest. 


	6. Part the Sixth (Conclusion and Author's ...

En Medias

by Half-Esper Laura  
Based on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (and a little bit on Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse) by Konami

Part 6 of 6, with Author's Notes

_So I suppose that brings us to where we are now._

_Oh, I'm sure you hear the stories about it, from all your friend's ancestors who've done it. It's not as grand a tale as you think..._

_It's not that. I don't care if he's my father. God knows he's never cared if I was his son. It's just... too soon. I don't want to talk about it._

_Why are you so stubborn? If I tell you, then will you leave me alone, finally? I've never met anyone so difficult!_

_Fine, if that's what you have to have, I'll tell you. How I killed Count Dracula._

***

Once again the clock was at the heart of everything. Its bells chimed crazily as Alucard stood before it. Part of him didn't know what he was thinking, bringing all the pieces of Dracula here, but he knew with certainty that this was the only way it could end. This Shaft person had control of Castlevania and all its horrors. If he tried to escape with the means of resurrecting the castle's true master, they would only pursue him... 

The clock exhausted its protests, and the ceiling opened above him. He took a breath, closed his eyes, thought of the fall, and flitted up through the opening on membranous wings. The place he found himself in after that was pitch black, and although he didn't feel like talking, he had to throw out a series of squeaks to hear its shape. Narrow tunnels up and around; sounded like rough masonry walls. He suspected there were some sort of glyphs carved in them; they hit his ears like distant strains of music, just tickling the edge of recognition. Now there was a hole in the layer of sound; an entrance, a cavernous place below that he lowered himself into. 

Torches burst to life with a suddenness that blinded his bat-eyes; instinctively, he reverted to his less-fragile human shape for the short drop to the floor. 

"The son of Lord Dracula," came a voice: Shaft, the Dark Priest who had posessed Richter Belmont. "How kind of you to come. I sent every creature I could to collect the pieces of His Lordship for me, but I was beginning to think I would have to chase you myself." 

"Don't think that I came here to cooperate with you," Alucard said. His vision was clearing, offering a view of an old man in arcane robes, with four orbs of green light floating around him, and a stone casket standing in the center of the room. Dracula's ashes...? 

"That is too bad," he said. "Because now you've brought everything I need to resurrect Lord Dracula. The missing pieces of his body, and a suitable sacrifice. I had thought that would be Richter Belmont, but you'll do." 

"Is that what you wanted the Belmont for?" Alucard asked, stepping back and placing a hand on his sword---the dream-sword from his mother, which he had found again. 

"Only a small part of it," Shaft replied. "Many have tried to revive Dracula through the ages, but all were stopped by the Holy Power wielded by Vampire Hunters. Of all of them, Richter Belmont was the strongest. So with him on our side, no other could stand against him. And when the hour came, I thought that Lord Dracula would particularly appreciate the gift of his blood." 

Alucard drew his sword. Although it had been difficult to see it past Shaft's evil influence, Maria's friend was, in a way, Trevor's child, and such villainous words stirred up a protective impulse. "You wretch! If you're going to sacrifice blood, sacrifice your own!" 

"Oh, but then there would be no one to give our message to Lord Dracula." One of the floating orbs flattened and folded into a seat, on which Shaft settled and let it lift him off the floor. "I and my Brotherhood will never forget what you've done for us." 

The three remaining spheres hurtled toward him, and he raised the dream-shield to deflect them. He hardly even felt the impact as he brushed them aside and charged Shaft. Before he got there, he saw him begin to dodge away; he knew the sword-stroke would miss but he followed it through, all the while concentrating on a small flame, so intense as to be almost solid... On the tip of his sword was the best place. He spun around after the charge, saw where Shaft had dodged to, and swung the sword again, not to slash, but for the momentum to throw that flame. The green orbs were coming toward him again, but they were knocked off-course as the flame hit Shaft and knocked him from his perch. 

The floating seat returned to spherical shape, and all four of the green lights dropped up onto the ceiling where they rested yet held shape, like drops of mercury. Shaft twisted his head around and watched Alucard closely as he picked himself up, clutching his ribs where he'd been hit. "The son of Lord Dracula... I should not have underestimated you." 

Alucard didn't even respond to the comment. "Why are you trying to resurrect my father? Isn't there enough suffering in the world?" he asked, sword still trained at the Dark Priest. 

For a moment, Shaft almost seemed taken aback by the change of subject, then smiled like an old man. He eased himself down to a seat on the step before Dracula's casket. "Yes, too much suffering, and with no purpose. Suffering is attendant on society, but perhaps you don't know that. You haven't seen so much of this age, I'm told." 

"You are hardly in a position to patronize me," Alucard pointed out. 

"Suffering is measured out by law and authority. It is part of the structure, the order of things, and yet it occurs at random. Pointlessly, meaninglessly. Wars are indiscriminate, the law is blind, and this is what we call ordered life. But I say it is not ordered at all. It is the most nebulous and chaotic of all. Order has choked on itself and become that which it sought to oppose, when all things were new. It has gone too far and must be checked. It has grown old and clouded, and must be wiped clear with its opposite. This world must be bathed in chaos." 

"To revive Dracula would be to bathe it in filth!" 

"Then perhaps we have gotten too far from the dust we came from," Shaft said, then sighed. "But I suppose arguing now makes no difference..." 

They both fell silent. _What shall I do with him now?_ Alucard wondered. _Kill him?_ What else could he do? How else could it end? Obviously the man was unrepentant. But now, he was only sitting here. To kill an old man in cold blood... 

A shadow stretched over Shaft's face, and Alucard realized that it was his own. But the light had been from above---"What!?" He spun, and for a moment his vision flooded with blinding green light before an impact in the side of his chest sent him spinning to the floor. 

Shaft laughed as he rose, almost casually. "Perhaps you should not have underestimated me." 

He was within striking distance. Alucard tried to raise his sword as he picked himself up, but his hand wouldn't move, not even to let him rise. He looked down to find that the green orb had wrapped around his wrist like a bracelet and was holding it in place. Suddenly it jerked upward, wrenching his shoulder as it knocked him off balance. He managed to get to his feet, sword still in hand. He still had some free motion of the wrist... But even as he thought it, Shaft grasped the blade in his hand, or rather in the green light that he had wrapped around it like a glove. Holding it near the hilt, he pivoted the blade out and around, and Alucard's arm twisted painfully as he fought to keep hold of the sword. _No! I can't lose like this!_ His heart was beginning to pound out that familiar strength, but whatever force was in those lights was insanely powerful, and at last the sword came loose from his grip, and the light reshaped to fit it into Shaft's hand. 

Desperate, Alucard brought his other arm around, but another of the orbs flung itself into his shield like wind in a sail and slammed it against the wall, dragging Alucard behind it. He barely heard the clang of the shield against the stone before his head was thrown against the wall. 

By the time he came to his senses, both his wrists were pinned to the wall by Shaft's luminous servants. His feet were still on the floor, but were likewise held in place. He lifted his head to see Shaft standing in front of him, and beyond him, the casket, now standing open. He knew he couldn't let it end like this. He knew he had to fight, he had to do... what!? The dizzyness from the blow was as much his opponent as Shaft. Somehow he no longer fully understood what was happening, even as the Dark Priest searched through his clothes until he found the bag containing the pieces of Dracula, crossed the room with them, and arranged them carefully in the casket. 

But he knew that this wasn't right. He was losing; his life was in danger. That was enough to know, and he fought desperately against his glowing shackles. With all his strenth and weight, he tried to pull one of his wrists away, but it wouldn't budge even an inch, and he fell to catching his breath. 

Shaft crossed the room to him. The hand holding Alucard's sword still wore that luminous glove. "Everything is nearly ready." With his free hand, he reached for Alucard's face. "I'd like you to---" 

Alucard struck forward with his head-at least he could still move that-and clamped his teeth down on Shaft's outstretched hand. He screamed and tried to pull away, but Alucard poured all his strength into biting down and sucking... 

Shaft swung with his other hand, punching with the green light surrounding the hilt of the sword. It impacted on Alucard's face with such force that it tore his teeth out of Shaft's hand, and the wrist-shackle that kept him from being knocked away by the punch drew blood in doing so. He spat blood, first Shaft's, then his own; his mouth was bleeding, and several teeth had been loosened. 

Shaft's high manner was all gone now, and he spoke with obvious anger, nursing his torn hand. "Much as I wish you could be here to see Lord Dracula's return---" 

"I'll see you in Hell first!" Alucard growled. 

"Be that as it may, I can't risk having you disrupt the ceremony. But I'll be certain to tell him what a nuisance you were. I'm sure he'll be proud." 

Alucard's heart was still pounding, harder now, as Shaft raised the sword. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying with one last Herculean effort to pull himself free... 

The sword felt red-hot as it lanced through him, inward and up. It stopped the pounding of his heart, but not the force behind it, as if it had been thrust into the gears of a clock, which then kept grinding and trying to turn until they shattered. His last breath was released with a scream of pain, and he couldn't take another one. Already his lungs were caught up in the vacuum of pain surrounding the blade. He couldn't even feel his hands and feet. 

His eyes must have come open; images danced before him like dreams. His face was leaned over the sword. Shaft had fashioned his green orb of light into a sort of chalice, to catch Alucard's blood as it ran copiously down the blade and drizzled off the hilt. It was hypnotizing to watch it, to listen to the sound it made, like the laughing of running water. He couldn't help leaning lower and lower over it... 

The cup disappeared, and so did his bonds; his entire body sank like lead. He had no strength to lift his head and watch Shaft walk away from him, but only kept leaning over the hilt of the sword until it caught against his chest, just for a moment. The point of the blade, his last tether, pulled loose from the wall and he fell headlong into darkness. 

He couldn't say how long he was falling, he only gradually realized that nothing was happening. He couldn't imagine where he was or what to do, and tried to reach out for anything that might be there, although his arms were numb. Numb until something-someone-took them with a gentle grip, guided them to where they were supposed to go, pulled him closer ever so gently and embraced him. 

"What's wrong, Adrian?" 

_Mother...?_ She was holding him in her arms, as she had when he was a little child. Somehow he was that small again. It was a sensation he thought he had lost forever. He wanted to enjoy it, but he couldn't help resting his face in her shoulder and crying. 

"What is it, sweetheart?" she asked, stroking his hair. 

He didn't know what to tell her. 

"It's all right; you can tell me. Your father will be home soon, and he won't know what to do if he finds you crying." 

"No! I don't want to see him!" Adrian could feel his father's presence distantly; it felt like he was in a rage, and he clung tightly to his mother. 

She turned to place herself between him and Dracula's presence. "Now, now, you should at least give him a chance. He is your father." 

"But he always frightens me! He's always hurting me..." 

Gently, Lisa cupped a hand around his head and lifted his face to hers. "Adrian. You know that I love your father, and I always will. But it's wrong for him to hurt you, even if he doesn't mean to. I'll do everything I can for you. Remember, I gave you your armor and shield and sword to protect you." 

_The sword...!_ Adrian remembered what had happened, and buried his face in his mother's shoulder again. 

"Adrian?" 

"I... I died!" 

"Shhh. No, you didn't." 

"But the sword..." 

"I gave you that sword to protect you. Do you think I would let it kill you?" 

He stared at her incredulously. How could he not be dead, after being stabbed through the heart? 

"Here," she said. "Let me show you." Gently, she knelt and lay him down on the ground. Her hand found and gripped the hilt of the sword in his chest, and she bent over his face and kissed his forehead before drawing it out in one swift pull. 

Alucard woke with a start, gasping for breath. There was a clatter of metal, and suddenly he was snatched up, smothered in a body cold as winter earth... "Father, let me go..!" 

"Thank God you're alive!" Although those words were a spark of humanity, Alucard shuddered to hear Dracula's voice again. His father held him at arms' length, admiring him as a child would a Christmas gift as he carried him across the room and set him on the step below the casket. "Oh, my sweet child, I thought that human pig had killed you!" 

"Shaft...!?" 

"Oh, was it that one again? I thought I'd seen it before... No matter now. He won't bother us anymore. Come! This is a night to celebrate!" 

Alucard found that he couldn't rise. Even if dying had been a dream, he had felt his heart stop, and it left him weak and trembling. He dreaded his father's sort of "celebration," but what could he do? He was too weak to stand, let alone resist. "No... don't..." 

"What!? How could I not? My son, you can't know! It's been almost four hundred years since I saw your face, and you look so like your mother..." 

_So, it **has** been four hundred years..._

"In all this time, you can't imagine the comfort, the joy it has brought me to know that somewhere, you were alive. Even if I never saw you. Always when I woke, I would ask the spirits about you, and they said that you were alive, but always sleeping. Some curse or spell no doubt... It was those curs who turned you against me, wasn't it? The Belmont and that witch..." 

"No! No, not them..." 

"Then who?" Dracula asked, taking him by the chin. "Say it and they and their kin will be sorry for it. Tonight! And that would be a celebration, wouldn't it?" 

Alucard had gained his bearings enough to turn his head away. "Then you'll have to punish yourself and I. I went to sleep of my own will." 

His father stared at him incredulously for a long moment. "You... How could you do such a thing!?" he roared. "Why!?" 

"Why? Because of you! Because of your cursed blood in my veins! How could I live, always hiding, always fighting to protect the people I loved from myself and my thirst for blood?? That is my legacy from you! That I'm a monster that was never meant to live!" 

"I gave you life! And power that humans only dream of!" Dracula turned away in frustration. Alucard had been expecting something worse by now. "You always were so ingrateful..." Dracula said. "Do you think this is the kind of life your mother would have wanted for you?" 

"And would she have wanted the kind of life you have, leaving a trail of death and misery wherever you go?" 

"Humans!" Dracula insisted. "Forget them! Nothing more than prey animals!" 

"Mother was a human." 

"Your mother was divine! She was above them, and for that they killed her! Have you forgotten that??" 

Alucard paused slightly. "How can you ask me that? I was there when she died, I had that moment burned into my mind for all time. Every time I try to think of her, I remember it and break my heart." 

"Then how can you defend the beasts who did such a thing?" 

"Mother did. Even then, at the last." 

"You can't be serious," Dracula hissed. "You wouldn't dare lie to me about her..." 

"No, I wouldn't, but I must beg her forgiveness, that I never told you her last words..." 

"Tell me now...!" 

Alucard took a deep breath to compose himself, and met his father's gaze steadily. "She said, "Do not hate these people. Do not hate humans. If you cannot live with them, then at least do them no harm, for they have enough troubles just in themselves." He paused for a moment, and his father only stared. "And she wanted me to tell you... that she would always love you, for all eternity." 

At last Dracula found his voice. "That isn't true. It can't be; Lisa would never say such a thing!" 

"How can you say that?? I knew her only as a child, and I know those are her words. I would recognize them as her voice, even if I hadn't heard them from her own lips. You accused me of forgetting her---have you??" 

"You don't know anything!" Dracula shouted. "You can never understand her! You aren't _human_ enough to understand her!" 

_I'm more human than you_, Alucard thought, but didn't dare say it. "I may be too much a vampire to fully understand humans or live among them, but I'm far too human to dismiss them as you do." 

"They want nothing to do with you!" Dracula argued. Unexpectedly, he took almost a pleading tone. "Why do you chase after your human half when all they give you is scorn and hatred? Give them the same and then you can be happy, don't you see? If you hold onto them, they'll only hurt you. If those you knew before were better to you than your own father, where are they now? They're dead!" 

Alucard flinched at that. 

"I and mine will always be here," Dracula said, sitting down on the step beside his son. "I will never leave you alone." 

"I can't do what you say," he replied, coldly. "And even if I could, I wouldn't." 

"It is what you _must_ do!!" Dracula insisted. 

"I will do as I choose!" 

"And put yourself to sleep again? Perhaps forever this time!? Not while I live!" He grabbed Alucard's arm and roughly yanked him forward to take a handful of his hair. "I'll teach you to forget them. We'll do away with the claim they have on you." 

Perhaps it was still the shock of his injury, or perhaps an instant of denial out of fear, but Alucard wasted a precious moment in realizing what his father meant by that. Only when he felt the cold kiss on his neck was he able to react. 

"_**NO!**_" 

***

_---To turn me into a vampire, to take my human soul from me. In that moment I forgot everything else. Defeating him didn't matter, living or dying didn't matter, only stopping that. Only never to be a vampire. I can't imagine a death so horrible that I would not prefer it to such a fate, and I can imagine quite a lot._

_I'm not even sure how it happened. I was still in shock, so weak... And he, as always, was unbelievably strong..._

***

Alucard spilled across the floor with a stunning impact on his back and his head. He had no idea how he had managed to get out of his father's grip, but it didn't matter. Thinking about it now would be wasting needed time... 

But already Dracula's black cloak was sweeping down on him again, and this time he was on the floor, up against the stone step; there was nowhere left to dodge. He tried to push his father away with his hands, but Dracula took his wrists and bent his arms back as if it were nothing. Alucard was screaming, tears running down his face. 

"_**NO!** No, don't do this! **Oh, God, no! God help me, PLEASE!**_" 

When they were face-to-face, he switched his head back and forth, frantically trying to protect his neck. At last Dracula grasped the hair of his crown and yanked his head back. 

"_No, **PLEASE!! NO**_---!" He took a small gasp as the fangs pierced his skin, and stopped screaming. 

The bite was a sharp, cold, somehow delightful tickle. Even the stinging of the blood being drawn out from it was a strangely pleasant sensation. It relaxed him despite himself, with a paradoxical leftover tension that felt like holding back a laugh. But that laughter would never come; his entire body was lulled even beyond that. _So this is what it feels like... This is why they never fight..._ He thought of Joan's husband; it was such a blur, but he was sure that man never resisted after the initial bite. One could be content to die like this; it was a difficult temptation to resist... 

If it were a matter of dying, Alucard would likely have given in to that temptation, but he had even far more at stake. It took every ounce of strength and will to lift his hands and even begin to try to push Dracula away, but that strength was diminishing moment by moment as his blood drained. His hands were numb. Through the black gloves, he could no longer tell if they were touching anything. 

There was a metallic clatter as his knuckles hit the stone floor. The noise roused him into a moment of clarity, enough to recognize the shape of the sword-handle. Power. Power to stop this... He aimed the point of it blindly. Whether it found him or his father didn't matter. He wasn't striking at either of them, but at the event, at the point of transfer, the cold sweet sting in his neck. 

He didn't feel the blade slide into place, but then, he might have been beyond feeling it. Some sensation changed. Cold flowing over him... A sound, a growl, and suddenly that narcotic kiss turned into a predator's crushing bite. 

The spell was broken. With a cry of pain, Alucard struck out against it. The sword swung out in a wide arc of blood. 

The cold and weight and blackness that had been Dracula fell away. Alucard seized the opportunity and dragged himself up the stair. Turning over his shoulder, he saw the corpse laying like a black island in a crimson sea of blood. It seemed the entire floor of the room was awash with it, and he scrambled up the steps to the coffin, certain that it would climb after him like floodwaters and overtake him. 

Suddenly he realized that he hadn't seen the head, and immediately clapped a hand to the wound in his neck, lest it still be there. But no, there was only the hot sting of his glove against the open wound. When he lifted it and looked at it, it glistened red with his blood. 

A groaning sound reverberated through the stone of the castle all around him. Rippled grooves were forming in the sea of Dracula's Blood as it found the joints and cracks in the floor. Any moment they would start coming apart; the castle would begin to collapse. 

Alucard looked to the opening in the ceiling. He had to become a bat, had to escape... But his mind was growing hazier by the moment, and the search for the knowledge of the transformation was maddeningly futile. 

_Why...?_ Why bother to get out? What would there be for him, even outside the castle? Trevor and Sypha and the others had all been dead for centuries. It was some strange new world out there that had nothing to do with him... 

He let his body sag backward, and being dizzy, he tumbled off balance into the open casket. The groan of the masonry had swelled to a roar when the floor lurched with a crack like thunder. The heavy stone lid of the casket was shaken loose, and fell into place with an almost-deafening boom. 

Then nothing. Had the lid fallen in and crushed him? No, there was still sensation; Alucard could still feel the hard-packed earth against his face, the smell of dirt and old blood. He was in Dracula's coffin, loathsome as it was. Somewhere he had probably read of some supernatural effect this could have for them both, but he couldn't remember it now. Only somehow, the coffin had sealed out the sight and sound of the collapsing castle. 

He knew it couldn't last, that any moment some mass of stone would smash through the coffin and crush the life out of him. But somewhere deeper, he knew that that would never happen. That was all suddenly very far away... 

***

_I didn't get out. I waited there for a very long time. It must have been hours. By the end, I couldn't tell at all how long it had been, but still I waited. I didn't know what was happening. I might have opened it up to find the fires of Hell. But finally I did open it, and I was there, on the bare earth where the castle had been, and it was night. With Castlevania gone, night is more gentle to me..._

_I had nowhere to go. I suppose it was only by chance that I encountered you and your friend again. I'm glad that he is well._

***

"And suppose you hadn't chanced to see us? Would you just have left like that, without a word to anyone?" 

***

_I might have. Who would I give word to? You must understand---_

***

"Understand what? You told me this entire story and I still don't know. What about it was I supposed to understand?" 

Alucard gave a long-suffering sigh. He couldn't imagine how she could hear the whole sordid story and not understand, but he couldn't begin to put it into words... All the words that had gone before had exhausted him. And rest was so close... He was sitting on the very casket that Trevor had bought him, still full of the same earth. It called to him with the siren voice of warmth and peace, and oblivion. But here she was, golden-haired, blushing Maria, standing between him and that sweet song... "Then just understand... that I'm tired. 

"I am so tired..." 

"That could be from the bleeding," Maria said. "Let me look." 

"That isn't what I mean." 

"You've been hurt, let me look." 

She pulled off her gloves and reached for his collar, and despite himself he let her touch him, untie the jabot and fold the collar aside. He thought about it as she tipped his chin up with her hand and felt around the bite with her warm fingers, and supposed he had shown her far worse wounds already. 

"Well, the bleeding's stopped. There's a bit of a mark but I think it'll be fine." 

"I heal quickly." 

"Your body does." 

Alucard looked up and met her eyes. For the first time, it seemed that she had been listening to him all along. 

"Listen," she said, taking one of his hands between hers, "I understand how you feel, as best I can, at least. But I heard everything you said, and you never did anything that was that bad." 

"I killed someone..." 

"Once. In self defense. Compared to I-don't-know-how-many people you protected from harm at great personal cost." 

"I had to do that. For what I am... Somehow I had to pay it back if I was to live among people. But it wasn't enough..." Maria touched his shoulder and shushed him gently, but suddenly he wouldn't have any of that. "'If you cannot live with them, then at least do them no harm, for they have enough troubles just in themselves.' I cannot live with humans. I tried. I tried so hard, and it can't be done. The least I should do is leave them---_you_---in peace. Or I should say the most I can do..." 

"I'm sure that isn't what your mother meant." 

"Oh, no?" 

"No. And if it is, then she was wrong." 

Alucard looked up at her incredulously. 

"And in fact, I think that she would---or at least very well _should_---be very proud of you." 

"Why...?" he asked. "The best thing I've ever done is to kill my father, whom she loved." 

"Because you tried. You did everything you could and everything you thought was right. No one can ask for more than that." 

"Maybe I did." 

"Definitely you did," Maria insisted. 

He paused. When the words came they were catching in his throat. "Perhaps that is the cruellest fate of all. That it still isn't enough." 

"Yes, it is!" 

"Why are you so stubborn!?" he burst out. "What do you want from me!?" 

She sighed and settled into her seat beside him on the stone casket. "I know you must be pretty annoyed with me. You were thrown into the middle of my fight, and I guess I took advantage of that, and of you. It wasn't exactly a good start. But, let me make it up to you. I want to help you." 

"You could help me a great deal by leaving me alone." 

"No. Haven't you been listening to yourself? You miss your friends. You feel alone in this time and it hurts you. But you don't have to. You're not alone. You can find a place here and now. I'll help you. I don't want you to go." 

"Why!?" 

"Because you deserve better!" Maria cut in again before he could respond. "And because your best is more than enough for me. And I want you to accept that you are more than good enough for me. Do that, and then you can do whatever you want. I won't stop you." 

"Fine! Whatever you say, I will accept." 

"No. You don't understand. You have to look at me; look me in the eyes." 

Obediently, he looked at her, but her face was so open and serious that he could do nothing but return the sincerity. Slowly, she reached toward him and rested her palm against his cheek. 

"Do you believe me?" 

"Yes," he answered. Her hand was very warm, her touch gentle, somehow unrefined but all the better for it. Her skin was rosy with health and sun. He had been annoyed by her stubbornness, but her face at that moment was full of emotion, so direct and honest that she fairly glowed with that humanity--- 

"I love you." 

Alucard jumped back from Maria in shock. He had opened himself up to the blow; he believed what she said, but he couldn't accept it. "You mustn't do that!" he blurted. 

"But I do! When I saw you again after the castle fell, I thought so, and now that I've talked with you like this, I know." 

"Then stop! Forget me! Can't you see? I would only hurt you." 

"So if I hate you, then I can be happy?" 

He stammered, off balance as he recognized the reference. "That isn't fair!" 

"Well, I can't and wouldn't follow that advice any more than you," she said. "I know bad things happened before, but this isn't any of those times. This is new. We can decide what will happen this time, and we can make it turn out right. Unless you leave." 

_Why did she have to say that...?_ To go to sleep and be able to say that he'd done what had to be done and no one was the worse for it... It would have been so easy... "Why did you have to make it so difficult...?" He was surprised to hear his voice breaking. It had been hundreds of years since he had heard that, and his face tightened to hold it back. 

"Shh... Come here," Maria said softly. She gathered him to her shoulder, and despite himself he accepted the gesture, rested his head on her shoulder, and began to cry. 

"It's all right," she cooed. He couldn't speak, but listened through his sobs. "I know it's a lot to ask. I know it's hard. But I'll help you. I know you can do it. You've been so brave already..." 

Eventually Alucard grew still enough to find his voice. "I might bite you." 

"I can take care of myself," Maria said. "Maybe not like you, but I at least held my own in Castlevania, and it wasn't the first time I'd been there, either. I was there when Richter fought your father. And I know you're not as bad as him." 

"No," he said, and with tremendous effort he smiled a little. 

"So will you come with me?" she asked. "At least for a little while?" 

He was silent for a long moment, considering. "Later... I am so tired..." 

"It's all right," she said. "We'll wait until nightfall. I can find my way home in the moonlight." 

_End_

Author's Notes:

Of course this story is primarily based on Castlevania, but my take on vampire lore was also influenced to varying degrees by "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" and "Vampire: The Masquerade." While I hadn't read Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, I did have some working knowledge of it from the Cliff's Notes, as well. 

As you can see, this story is told in two "tracks," the presentational/narrative track, and the representational/scenes track. I can even tell you why I did this (although I only realized it some time after the decision had been made). The story covers such a large span of time that coming up with enough representational scenes to tell the story smoothly would be cumbersome in the extreme. Exposition was needed, but flat exposition would be insufficient for the job. There's a reason writers are known for saying "show, don't tell." So, I used the first-person narrative format so that even the exposition would be emotionally engaged. In fact, I think there are some events whose import is expressed more fully by the way Alucard tells them than it would be if the events were "shown." Conversely, his narration could not have done justice to the scenes included. Notice that he only relates dialogue a few times, and then it's hearsay. And then in the case of several of the later scenes (the meeting with Maria, the Succubus, and the fake cast of Castlevania III), there could be no narration because either the listener already knew all about it or Alucard literally refused to talk about it. 

Speaking of those, the coverage of Symphony of the Night is admittedly spotty. This is mainly because of the differences in demands of the medium between video games and fiction, and these are vast. They can be seen not only in my omissions, but also in my handling of some of the scenes that were included. The final battle with Dracula here bears little resemblance to that in the game. The fact is that the game are combat oriented. It would've been a boring game if Alucard didn't go around killing scads of monsters, and would've been seriously remiss if it had not ended in an epic battle with Dracula appearing as some huge multi-headed monster. But the other fact is that in my experience, prolonged or frequent fight scenes in prose are just as boring as the lack of them in adventure games. If for example, instead of the "head job" that Alucard got from the Fake CV3 Crew, they had just, as in the game, shown up and started pounding on him, and he'd pounded them back and eventually killed them, I imagine it still would have had some effect of pointing up Alucard's sense of loss and isolation due to his temporal displacement (God I love those $64 words...), but it wouldn't have been nearly as extreme or as meaningful. 

So anyway, most of SOTN gets skipped over here because the fact is that Alucard had no one to meaningfully interact with for most of it. From my point of view, nothing particularly interesting was happening. As I envisioned it, even his relationship with Maria didn't develop much until after it was all over, and as mentioned above, her scenes could hardly be narrated anyway because the listener-Maria-was there for them when they happened, making it ridiculous to tell her about them. "The Demon's Tale" notwithstanding, the familiars don't appear here either, because I didn't think "animal buddies" would fit the mood of the story at that point. 

The story goes through an odd shift as the scenes chronologically catch up to the narration. Alucard starts holding back more. In fact, while all the scenes prior to SOTN were things that Alucard actually described, only one of the SOTN scenes did Maria get to hear. 

Speaking of Maria, throughout the story she occasionally asks questions or makes comments during the narration. I apologize if this is jarring because her comments are not actually inserted---all of a sudden Alucard acts like something has been said to him, and I tried my best not to let him do the old "What? Repeat everything you say to the audience so they'll know what I'm talking about?" trick. I think this was important in establishing that he is talking to someone, not just talking from some timeless narrator vantage-point, and the format just had no place for someone else's speech, until at the very end, the two tracks of the story meet, and you see my sort of desperate transition into the final scene. 

I disregarded a certain amount of accepted Castlevania canon when I did this. The original Castlevania timeline holds that Alucard is significantly older than Trevor for one thing-in my version, a relationship with Sonia Belmont and the possibility of Alucard being Trevor's father are obviously out the window. It also seems implicit that Alucard did some evildoing with his father at some point, and here you can see that as Maria says, he never really did anything bad enough to justify how much he hates himself. 

That is, perhaps, my greatest insecurity about the story. I like it this way, but one can't help but worry what readers will think, and my fear is that this story made Alucard seem too virtuous, indecisive, young, weak, depressive, friendly, pathetic, rebellious, dependent, fearful, moral, victimized, emotional, intellectual, shy, and wordy all at once. However, while I can't quote her word-for-word from memory, my best friend Kati (the story's first reader other than myself) put my mind at ease about this when she offered her opinion: 

"The 'problem' is that you made him seem _human_." 

I can only hope that I did. 

Oh, and uh... I like to write author's notes. Thanks for bearing with my pretentiousness. ^_~ 


End file.
